I'd guess a very heavy coupling.
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I'm guessing the crew forgot to align the drawbar and when they hit it at 7+ mph must have missed and hit the side of the coupler warping it an bending the platform and bit of the frame above it.
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Interesting damage shot, it took alot of force to snap the drawbar like that.
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That looks like what happened when we hit a semi truck on the tracks with a grain car. But the truck looked worse.
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| Posted by Ben S. on January 3, 2008 | |
Nice Photo! Maybe perhaps they ran her into a siding guard? Just a thought....
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The coupler box it look twisted, maybe a rotary dump?
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| Posted by Mike W. on January 4, 2008 | |
Thanks to all for the comments! I've seen the crews of Zearing-LaSalle drifting cars downhill into their other cars, some definitely didn't seem like a good good coupling speed. I have a feeling it's probably excessive coupling speed.
Here's a link to video of them coupling by my friend:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=mgB3SwXwtrw
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I'm guessing the car derailed, leaned to one side witch caused the coupler pocket to twist.
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| Posted by NS Guy on January 10, 2008 | |
A coupler by-pass will not do that. A hard couple will definitely not do that. The only thing that would probably do that is a derailment. Center sills are extremely strong. That car will be cut up, as no railroad would fix that. Seeing that it is a Southern car, probably built in mid to late 60's, it would cost more to have two carmen work on it for a week than the car is worth.
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I personally like the 2 ballast rocks that are used to keep the car from rolling.
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Ottawa is like an HO scale train route gone wrong. The IR Guion Street yard has a string of broken grain hoppers, and the CSX New Rock Sub's RT. 6 yard has a large amount of broken cars in general, including two C&NW pullman's. Just for the record, this broken car still sits on that small siding on that small portion of partial street running track.
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It's Still there, I took this exact photo two days ago when I was in Ottawa, Illinois.
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