Hi Folks:
I can promise you that a partly mty tank of diesel sloshes. When we were
playing with fuel tenders on the coal trains, you could get some interesting
stops when you were running light engine.
One night, on the eastbound local, we had to pick up a repaired BO off of
the pocket track at MP 584.4. The car was coupled to the west end of a
helper set w/tender. I went in on the Rozet tracks with my SD-40-2 and four
shorts, to pull it out and set it to the main. There were two other cars
east of the helpers, that weren't coupled together. We made a joint on the
first cars and went back to couple to the helpers. After making that joint,
I started to pull east. The grade is downhill to the east, off of the hump
at 584.4. I headed in on Rozet 4 ('cause that's the way the switch was
lined) on top of a tied down coal mty. I figured I'd gone far enough to
clear the crossover to the main, and I was down to about four cars before I
was going to kiss the parked hopper, but still getting no stop sign, so I
stopped. I knew right away something was not right. There was no
back-and-forth from the helper's tender, and it didn't take near enough
driver brake to stop. It occured to me that maybe I didn't have everything
I was supposed to. Mamma Decker didn't raise no fool, so I grabbed my
flashlight and got off. I was real fast across the front porch of the
motor, 'cause I figured that I was about to be collecting on my job
insurance, and I didn't want the Mrs. collecting on my life insurance too!
Well... I went out toward the highway, and I could see this big, black shape
coming down the hump. I started giving a BIG washout, hoping that one of
the brakemen or the conductor would figure it out. They just wondered who
that was giving the stop sign, and why Mike wasn't slowing down. Ya know,
when you have a collision, sparks come off of everything, the drawbars, the
wheels, the centerplates. When everything stopped...the first time, we just
had one derailed car, the mty C-6 behind the motor. Then, the fuel started
sloshing, and pushed the mess into the parked train, made a REAL hard joint,
and slooowly pushed the C-6 up onto the top of the motor. By that time,
there was no covering this one up. The investigation determined that the
cause was the brakemen not stretching the joint on the east end of the
helpers, and I didn't have to collect on my job insurance :-) After the
dust settled, the fuel tender looked fine, except that the running boards
had some severe wrinkles in them.
Mike Decker
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