The term runaway was indeed used to describe a train w/o brakes,a car placed
at an indutry,siding or yard track that decided to start rolling on its own(
two recent cases of this come to mind 1) was a pair of cars in the West Yard @
Eola being runaround on the front/back leads that ended up in the driveway to
the Spring ST side of the Aurora Depot parking lot and 2) the car of sand that
got away from the Oregon industry and ended up down near Honey Creek on the
mainline rolling back and forth.
Oh and then there's the third case from about 1977 or so. L Peshia and crew
were working the C&I local eastbound and had a car of AA(Anyhdrous Ammonia) for
FS at Waterman,IL. but the switch opens westward so rather than take the car
downtown and use the pass to runaround it they decided to use gravity to get
the car into the FS stub trk. Now keep in mind that FS is literally on the side
of Waterman Hill,I've actually been on drags that stalled here westbound.
After making sure the handbrake worked,bleeding the air and running the engine
east of the switch to FS,they lined it for the industry and let her roll into
the stub trk allowing gravity to save time. Lou was on the handbrake and having
30 plus years was no beginner at making sure he had control of the car as its
downhill to the end of the stub trk. Well 33,000 gallons of AA didn't want to
stop once it got rolling and Lou rode the car until it stopped in the mud with
one set of trucks buried. Yours truly made this same move about a year before
on a load of FERTZ. and somehow even managed to get the car stopped over the
unloading auger w/o needing the engine to come in to spot her up. I really
thought I was going to have a runaway myself.
Ok, back to the answer of yet another use of the term runaway in railroading:
what do you call a car "kicked" down the lead in a yard when you realize the
waycar track switch is open and there are numerous crews in various states of
repose in those waycars ? A runaway. This probably happened more times then
people really want to discuss. But the one that I just learned about happened
in
Proviso Yard when a switchmens strike was on and a made up crew of
Management were working the lead. I'm not passing judgement on the crew and
neither did
the author of "12.0000 days on the Northwestern Line" who was a member of
that crew. He was working the "field" that night and ran down the w/c track
screaming "runaway" and pounding on the sides of the w/cs. The sleepy
inhabitants
did indeed join the birdies as fast as they could.
Leo
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