I was on a big wreck near Hancock NY "Deposit NY", along the banks of the Upper Delaware River. A flash flood washed out the tracks at 2:00 AM this past Thurs Morning. Four big six axle locomotives went into the hole and another 16 cars derailed in two batches within the train. We had Four Cat 583's, a 977L, Two Komatsu Excavators, and a Komatsu D37-PX clean up dozer. It was on a side hill cut between Route 83 and the Delaware River. We also had multiple cars in the river. Lots of Diesel spilled, but no one hurt. It was a real muscle job to get those 180 ton engines up and out of the hole, and the cars up out of the river. Some pics for ya.

Thanks for posting these pics TimT, it's nice to see well maintained tractors like these 583s still on the job. Nice Trucks too!
Craig

"Neil" wrote:

Does the railroad run a cable alongside the track that, if broken, would give advance warning that the track was out? I'm guessing there's more to it than that because there must be a heck of a counterprice to the cost of that salvage job, along with repairs to the equipment, along with liquidated damages and loss of revenue. It would be good to have a business analyst explain the tradeoff.

Neil, from my time as a freight Conductor at BNSF there were 2 types of tracks that I ran freight trains ran on, "signaled" territory and "dark" territory. The signaled territory was divided up into "blocks" which are pre-determined lengths of track that are governed by the signal lights, which are positioned at each end of every block. The signal lights could display the colors green, red, amber, and lunar (white) that either by themselves or in combinations would indicate how to proceed (or not proceed) into the next block, at which speed, whether to expect to take a siding, etc. Each block operates on an electrical circuit that is "shunted" from one energized rail to the other non-energized rail by the train's wheels and axles as it passes through it, and each block is insulated from its adjoining blocks so the system can tell where the trains are based on which blocks are shunted and which ones are open. All the signals are interconnected so that the proper stop/go signals are displayed in advance of and behind each train to aid in keeping everybody well clear of each other, and are also used in conjunction with track warrants to grant specific authority to each train to only occupy a predetermined section of track. So one positive benefit of signaled territory is that the system also has the ability to detect if a block has suffered damage to its road bed that would've been severe enough to de-energize the rail, flagging the system that a fault is present and causing it to display all "stop" signals for several blocks on each end of the affected block, plus alerting dispatch that a problem exists.

But in "dark" territory the rails are largely unmonitored, since no signal lights exist there and none of the rails are wired. Train traffic is solely governed by track warrants which are transmitted by radio to the crews, and everybody is expected to know exactly where they are at all times and exactly how long their train is so as not to over-run their authority and occupy another train's assigned section of track. Various additional radio protocols are also mandatory here as each train has to call out their positions as they pass through stations or other indicated landmarks just in case another train is nearby to alert them to their proximity. So in dark territory, it would be possible for huge sections of track to completely disappear and nobody would know until actual eyes were close enough to see the damage.

Thank you for sharing the pictures. It must take a lot of coordination to get all of the equipment working at the moment for the common cause. Great well preserved Cats that still have the muscle.

Hi, TimT.
Thanks for sharing the photos, looks like it would have been an 'int'restin' ' job.

That second to last photo is an example of why Buster Peterson developed the offset 2U D8 sidebooms for Bechtel on the Sierra Nevada section of the California-Texas oil pipeline. The boom side track was offset 30" further out from the tractor to handle the pipe loads coming through the mountains. I have some photos of a 14A version on one of my pocket hard drives - will hafta dig them out and post them here on ACMOC.

Just my 0.02. Thanks again.

It looks like there is a propane bottle on the machine in picture #4. What is it used for?

"d4angelo" wrote:

It looks like there is a propane bottle on the machine in picture #4. What is it used for?

The sidebooms are all equipped with cutting torches and hose reels. The machines are modified quite a bit for the work. Booms are shop built, the hoist blocks are from 594's and lots of brackets for tools, rigging chains, center pin holders, sledges, bars, etc. Three have bolt on rubber track pads for climbing over and on the rail. One is always kept as a heavy grouser machine for pulling hard. They also have D9G, and D8H's with C-blades and D89C hyster winches for dozer/winch tractors. We just did not have them on this job.
I ran the 977L and "I hate to say it" my favorite machine, the little D37-PX Komatsu!!!. Its amazing what you can do in a hurry with that thing. We did a lot of dozing with it on this job.Here are a few more pics... and a drone video a guy made.

Great pics Tim, thanks for posting. How did you get the engines back on track?