Where's the hand of God when you need it?

[highpeak]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQbi3uPSATE

 

Somebody needs to come along with a Proto 1 standards gauge and check that frog and the wheels.

 

Pan Am/Guilford fans, note the B&M blue box cars in the background.

[Gloucester Road]

Where was this?

[dave_long]

What about the giant track rubber to clean the track with it looks very dirty.

[beast66606]

Where was this?

 

Title says Rigby derailment

[stock_2007]

Looking at the track makes you wonder how wagons are not jumping off all the time

[highpeak]

Perhaps I should have added some details about the location. Rigby yard is in South Portland, Maine. It's where the erstwhile Maine Central (MEC) and Boston and Maine (B&M)met end-to-end and was operated by a subsidiary company, Portland Terminal.

Rigby's function broadly speaking was to consolidate all the southbound traffic coming from points north in Maine and hand it over to the B&M, and to break down B&M trains for forwarding to their destination on Maine Central's network of branch lines or pass it along to the Bangor and Aroostook if it was destined further north.

It is a much reduced shadow of its former self, partly because of the general downturn in traffic, or at least in the variety of traffic (a lot of the rail network in Maine is abandoned) and partly because MEC and B&M are joined in the Pan Am rail system.

The state of the track in most of Pan Am's division 1 (former MEC lines) is quite poor. There is still a lot of stick rail track in bad condition with a general 10mph speed restriction.

[Dr.Glum]

Am I being wimpish, or does anyone else find it very disturbing as to the risks the two ground workers took. I would not have gone anywhere near the leaning-to side of that boxcar. Now I'm sure they've done it all before, many times judging by the comments above about the state of the company's track. They lift via the knuckler - so where's the centre of gravity? If the car is empty, probably a bit below, but if laden . . . . .

Once the lift began, they were putting a lot of faith in a) that the other end of the car was firmly on the track and/or acting as a stable base (on the pivot of the truck that end)  and b )  that the crane jack-points on the rail head or soft ground neither moved nor subsided. I watched the whole lift waiting for the car or crane to topple, and most of the time one or two of the men were in the fall zone.

I have an engineering background: what can go wrong, does go wrong, They are presumably professionals at what they do, and I've only seen them do it once, in one situation, but I worry that they're going to get caught out one day.

[alastairb]

I took his shot at Rigby whilst on holiday in New England in 2008. Whilst the 300mm lens exagerrates the effect, the track at the LH edge of the photo doesn't look too clever!

[highpeak]

Per comments on railroad.net car was loaded with paper.

 

As best I can determine video would have been taken from the public highway, there's an overpass at the throat of the yard.

 

I believe they do get quite a bit of practice putting things back on the rails. Rigby used to have pretty decent track, but that was quite a while ago.

[garethashenden]

PanAm's had a bit of a winter haven't they. I think this is the fourth derailment I'm heard about so far this year.