Last summer, on the 29th of July, I was called off the extra board to work as a Brakeman on a gravel train. The plan was to go to Birchwood, where the train was parked overnight, take it to Palmer to load gravel, and then head south to Anchorage, where the gravel would be dumped at Anchorage Sand & Gravel's dump site, and then return the train to Birchwood to park it for the night. At that point, we would get a ride back to town, and go home. That was a typical day on the gravel train, and it took the full 12 hours usually. Palmer and Anchorage are not that far apart, but loading and unloading takes several hours.
We got to Birchwood just as the sun was rising (which is pretty early in Alaska!) and untied the train. There were nine cars tied down, and I made sure to check three cars behind the last one with a hand brake, as usual. Shortly afterwards, we began our trip north towards Palmer. On the Palmer Branch, there is a loop near milepost A1, where we normally turn the gravel train around, prior to loading. The loading tipple is north of the loop, but it is much easier to turn the empty train and then back it up to the tipple. We stopped at the switch leading to the loop, which happens to be the only spring switch on the entire railroad, and then started around the loop. Since the train had loaded the day before, the switch at the north end of the loop was against us, so we had to stop. The Conductor and I both got off there, since we would have to back up to the tipple after the train came out of the loop.
Once we were off the train and had lined the switch, the engineer started pulling out of the loop. For the first 35 cars, nothing extraordinary happened. After about 35 cars went by, we could smell something that was not quite right, and we could hear a car making a lot of noise. A couple cars later, we saw the culprit. The 43rd car was moving, but the wheels were not turning. We told the engineer to stop, and he did as quickly as he could. When the train stopped, we looked at the car and found that the hand brake was fully applied. This was puzzling, and we figured it must have been applied in Anchorage and never released, which would mean the previous crew would have dragged it from Anchorage to Birchwood, and we certainly had dragged it from Birchwood to Palmer. We released the hand brake and called the dispatcher, so they could have someone check the tracks before the morning express passenger train came through.
We inspected all the wheels on the car and determined pretty quickly that they were completely shot and would have to be replaced before that car could go anywhere. We are not supposed to let a car go on if it has flat spots or shell spots of a certain size. The wheels on this car were so badly damaged they were not even round anymore! Between Birchwood and Palmer, we had been up to 50 mph with this car dragging. There were some massive flat spots, but it looked like the wheels had turned a bit, because in other places, all the metal scraped off to create the flat spots was piled up on the wheel treads, creating large bulges and piles of what looked like molten metal chunks. It was a mess. We came up with a plan to pull the train out of the loop and set the car out in the loop for the Carmen. The loop was not ideal, because it would disrupt the gravel train the next day, but we really had no other choice.
We explained what was going on to the engineer and instructed him to move very slowly for set out process. It would take a while, but the goal was to get the car out of the train without causing more damage to the car or the track. I rode on the car ahead of the damaged one so that I could keep an eye on it and stop the engineer if anything happened. The Conductor stayed at the switch. As we started moving, the wheels turned, but all those piles of metal shavings and bulges caused the entire car to bounce, wobble, and hop violently as we moved, even at only about two miles per hour. After about fifty feet of this I asked the engineer to stop and I tried to knock some of the mess off the wheels, but I was unsuccessful. I did notice that as the wheels turned, these chunks and bulges had destroyed the brake shoes. This meant we would probably have to set out a second car since we would be unable to rely on the hand brake on the damaged car.
We continued moving south to get the train out of the loop, but we only made it a few hundred feet. The car hopped and hit a low rail joint at the same time, and the lead wheels landed on the ties. I told the engineer to "plug it," or place the brakes in Emergency, but the second axle followed before he stopped. Even at two miles per hour and with emergency braking, it took about 50 feet to stop the train. We called the dispatcher, who had just come on duty, and informed her of the situation. She told us to hang out and wait, and she would send someone out to look at it. It was only 6:30am though, so none of the management would be there for several hours. Palmer is an hour drive from Anchorage, and most of the managers do not come in before 7:30am or 8:00am.
As per the normal protocol, the managers came out and got written statements of the facts from us and downloaded the locomotive event recorder tapes. The dispatcher had already had a track inspector look at the track between Birchwood and Palmer, and evidence of a dragging car had been found. I guess they were able to find marks and some minor damage to the rail. We suggested they check everything between Anchorage and Birchwood as well, since it made no sense that one car 43 back would have the hand brake applied in Birchwood. In Anchorage, when the train gets dumped, it is split in two sections, so it would make sense to have cars that were in the middle tied down there. If someone forgot to release a hand brake when the train was put back together, it would explain why the hand brake was applied. The management agreed to do that. They decided that the damage to the wheels of the car was enough that it should be repaired right there. There was no sense in rerailing it out and then setting it out for later, since the Carmen would have to drive out there to rerail it anyway. Some calls were made to Anchorage to get wheels, jacks, and a boom truck out there to take care of the car.
Around noon, the Carmen arrived with wheels and went to work. We uncoupled the head of the train from the car, and then backed around the loop and pulled the rear portion of the train away from the car as well, to give the Carmen plenty of space to work. Then all we had was time to kill. They told us it would take a couple hours to replace all the wheels. During that down time, we learned that the track inspector had found similar rail damage south of Birchwood, indicating that the car had been dragged from Anchorage.
By the time the Carmen were done replacing the wheels and brakes, we were nearly out of time to work. Anchorage Sand & Gravel had decided to cancel the train several hours earlier, because of the delay. Even if it had been loaded then, it would have been around midnight before it got to Anchorage, at which point everyone at AS&G would be at home. We put the train back together and then pulled it down near Matanuska, the junction where Palmer Branch leaves the main line. There we tied it down and got in the van to go home. The next day they would be able to get on the train there and just back up to the tipple and load as normal.
As far as derailments go, we were pretty fortunate. The railroad lost a day's revenue from one of the most lucrative trains, but overall it was a pretty minor incident. Between Anchorage and Birchwood the previous day, that train had probably attained speeds near 60 mph, with that hand brake applied, and we had been up to 50 mph that morning. We all agreed that the railroad and us were all very lucky that the car had not derailed then. The result would have been a pretty significant mess that would have cost a lot more than one day's revenue. It would have no doubt shut the railroad down for several days. All things considered, it could have been much worse.
The railroad did a formal investigation into the derailment, during which myself and everyone on that crew were relieved of responsibility for the incident. The cause was determined to be the failure of the Brakeman the previous day to release the hand brake prior to departing the Anchorage Sand & Gravel dump site. That Brakeman was not fired, but did get suspended from work for a couple weeks. Shortly after he came back to work, he took a voluntary layoff. In January 2014, he was offered the Conductor training program and opted out, effectively resigning. His resignation resulted in me having the seniority to get the Conductor training program instead.
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