A set of remotes came out of track 23 in the bowl at Hinkle. A loaded
car (cp 218053) came off of the hump into bowl track 21, which was a
clear track. Apparently, the car in 21 track came off of the hump a
little hot and rolled out of the east end of track 21 and onto the lead
that the remote set was set to use. The bowl tracks run at a 45 degree
angle with the lead and even though the car rolled onto the lead from
the left side or fireman's side it would have been extremely visible to
any engineer the would have been operating the locomotive. In other
words if there had been an engineer on locomotive UP 660, then he or she
would have been able to prevent this collision!
Please note where the damage is on the locomotive on picture 5-19-03 #1
and on the car that it hit, picture 5-19-03 #2 & #3. The only damage to
the car is on the trailing end of the car and no where else as you can
see on the picture of the full car! That means that the car was on the
lead ahead of the locomotive and traveling the same direction. When the
car was hit by the locomotive it tipped over and onto another car in an
adjacent track. That track angles off at a gradual angle from the trim
lead and when the car that was hit fell into the one on the lead, the
point of the north east end of the car (picture 5-19-03 #4 ) hit
mechanical refer arm 912045 (picture 5-19-03 #5) directly in the door.
Also, the locomotive's fuel tank was punctured and there was a loss of
diesel fuel.
What could have happened if arm 912045 was a hazardous tank? Could we
have had a catastrophic event?
