Post by URR566 on Jun 20, 2014 15:06:28 GMT -5
Posted by Nate Clark on October 7, 2013, 5:07 am
71.182.243.221
At 6:38 a.m. on January 16, 1982 at Sherwin, PA (just south of Claytonia), another northbound from North Bessemer violated the interlocking, returned to single track and almost immediately struck a southbound. The northbound was led by SD18 #857, trailed by SD38-2s #871 & #875. The first two units were destroyed, outright, but the 875 lingered at the Greenville Diesel Shop for over a year, as the B&LE Mof E Dept. weighed whether to rebuild her. As I recall, her bent frame and a surplus of B&LE motive power due to a 1982, recession-induced traffic downturn led to her ultimately being sold for scrap. I have never heard nor seen the numbers of the two pusher units that were shoving on that NB coal train at Sherwin, but being roughly a mile away on the rear-end of 104 loads, they were not damaged.
SD38-2 #874 and SD9s #822 & 840 were the power on the SB train. The first two units were also destroyed, outright, but the FRA report indicates the 840 received only "minor damage". There are photos of her in service, after this wreck.
As for the physics of RR collisions, when my brother and I were at the Sherwin wreck site during the initial clean up, and the equipment had barely been disturbed, I remember our both standing and staring silently at the front coupler shank (what was left of it) on the 857 or 874...probably both. What really struck us was the rainbow of iridescent discoloration on the freshly-exposed raw metal...the kind that is created when an extraordinarily high amount of mechanical and heat energy has been imparted to steel without melting it. (I had been a lab assistant in a Penn State metallurgical laboratory for a couple of years, just a year or two before.) The tens-of-millions of foot pounds of force that had been concentrated and dissipated in that small area in that instant that January morning had to be incredibly. The shattered imprint of two human silhouettes in the glass in front of the seats on either side of the cab front of #857 was a terrible witness mark of the collision (amazingly, both of those guys survived).
The back of #857 shearing the prime-mover of trailing SD38-2 #871 off its mounts as the stopped lead unit over-rode the Dash-2, and shoved the latter's diesel and generator out of the cab front (trailing south) of that 2nd unit, led to the worst possible outcome for the head brakeman riding there. He never had a chance. We were at once gripped with the sheer physics of the spectacle and overcome by the utter tragedy of it all. I was also struck by the fact that I had ridden in that same Dash-2's cab, in that very seat, exactly one month-to-the-day earlier, between Shenango and North Bessemer, accompanying a Cooper Energy load out of Grove City to the ship docks in Baltimore.
71.182.243.221
At 6:38 a.m. on January 16, 1982 at Sherwin, PA (just south of Claytonia), another northbound from North Bessemer violated the interlocking, returned to single track and almost immediately struck a southbound. The northbound was led by SD18 #857, trailed by SD38-2s #871 & #875. The first two units were destroyed, outright, but the 875 lingered at the Greenville Diesel Shop for over a year, as the B&LE Mof E Dept. weighed whether to rebuild her. As I recall, her bent frame and a surplus of B&LE motive power due to a 1982, recession-induced traffic downturn led to her ultimately being sold for scrap. I have never heard nor seen the numbers of the two pusher units that were shoving on that NB coal train at Sherwin, but being roughly a mile away on the rear-end of 104 loads, they were not damaged.
SD38-2 #874 and SD9s #822 & 840 were the power on the SB train. The first two units were also destroyed, outright, but the FRA report indicates the 840 received only "minor damage". There are photos of her in service, after this wreck.
As for the physics of RR collisions, when my brother and I were at the Sherwin wreck site during the initial clean up, and the equipment had barely been disturbed, I remember our both standing and staring silently at the front coupler shank (what was left of it) on the 857 or 874...probably both. What really struck us was the rainbow of iridescent discoloration on the freshly-exposed raw metal...the kind that is created when an extraordinarily high amount of mechanical and heat energy has been imparted to steel without melting it. (I had been a lab assistant in a Penn State metallurgical laboratory for a couple of years, just a year or two before.) The tens-of-millions of foot pounds of force that had been concentrated and dissipated in that small area in that instant that January morning had to be incredibly. The shattered imprint of two human silhouettes in the glass in front of the seats on either side of the cab front of #857 was a terrible witness mark of the collision (amazingly, both of those guys survived).
The back of #857 shearing the prime-mover of trailing SD38-2 #871 off its mounts as the stopped lead unit over-rode the Dash-2, and shoved the latter's diesel and generator out of the cab front (trailing south) of that 2nd unit, led to the worst possible outcome for the head brakeman riding there. He never had a chance. We were at once gripped with the sheer physics of the spectacle and overcome by the utter tragedy of it all. I was also struck by the fact that I had ridden in that same Dash-2's cab, in that very seat, exactly one month-to-the-day earlier, between Shenango and North Bessemer, accompanying a Cooper Energy load out of Grove City to the ship docks in Baltimore.