In going through my "old stuff"...I came across this one from John and was
reminded that I had intended to recall a similar incident that Conductor Ed
O'Neill wrote about in his "Railroad Memories" book.
At Ravenna, NE crews and waycars and engines were changed on all trains...BAck
in those days sometimes a "connection" would be called and sometimes not...If a
connection was called the outbound "westbound" crew would get ahold of their
waycar with their engine and wait at the east end of the yard yard and when the
inbound train arrived they would reach in with their waycar, pull the inbound
waycar off and kick it up the lead and put their outbound waycar on..They would
then put the inbound W/C away and go to the head end of the train and leave
town.
Sometimes if a connection was not called the inbound train would "drop" their
waycar into the yard at the east end by cutting it off east of the yard lead
switch with the rear man dropping off the rear end of the train and lining the
switch into the yard. On one occasion the rear man didn't get the switch over
in ti;me and not only derailed the waycar, but "upset" it as well. The head
brakeman, when he was ready to come back through the yard to get his W/C got on
the dispatcher's phone and was greeted by the dispatcher laughingly teling him
that...??????has got his waycar upside down.
Pete
-----Original Message-----
From: cbqrr47 <cbqrr47@yahoo.com>
To: CBQ <CBQ@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wed, Mar 2, 2011 9:27 am
Subject: [CBQ] Cambon Incident
Pete's story about the conductor who derailed his own waycar reminded me of an
incident that happened at Cambon. The late conductor Earnie Wagner was on a
Chiles empty train that was going set out the empties at Cambon for the West
Frankfort switch engine to pick up. The crew devised one of those famous save
time/work plans. The rear end crew would close the angle cocks between the
waycar and train and pull the pin in motion before the train pulled through the
cross over at the south end of the siding which had been lined by the yard
crew. The train would go into the siding and Earnie would dump the air with the
conductor's valve and stop the waycar south of the cross over. The motors would
then cut off and go through the sprig switch at the north end of the siding
before backing down to couple on to the waycar. Anyway, that was the plan.
Earnie bottled the air and pulled the pin. The waycar was coasting along at
about twenty five or thirty mile per hour, a couple of car lengths behind the
train. When the (green)engineer attempted to make a service reduction of the
air brakes to slow down, he shot the bill and put the train into emergency.
Earnie didn't react quick enouth and earned the distinction of being the only
man to run his waycar into his own train. A few years later, Earnie was called
for a coalfield turn out of Centralia. When they were a few miles south of
Centralia, Earnie had a massive heart attack and died on the waycar. At his
wake, his widow placed a pack of cigarettes and a six pack of his favoite beer
in the casket. Engineer Bob Shelton (not the one from the Cambon incident)
remarked to her, "Well one thing about it, where he is going he won't have to
worry about having matchs to light his cigarettes".
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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