Hinkle Yard / Hermiston, Ore. (UP)

May 27, 2003

Around 8 p.m. on the 27th of May, the RCO hump set was pulling a train out of the receiving yard and onto the hump pull back to hump when it made a rather quick stop. For those of you who don't know the lay out of the Hinkle yard, the track onto the hump pull back goes at a rather steep grade once it leaves the receiving yard. With the rather quick stop there was a good run in of slack from the cars that were being pulled. Everything was fine until the slack ran out. When it did, it snapped the train in two pieces. The break was in the middle of a string of tank cars. With the hump being on a grade, the cars that weren't attached to the locomotives started to roll back into the receiving yard (with no brakes). Apparently there were enough workers to jump onto the cars that were rolling back and they were able to get them stopped before the runaway cars rolled out of the receiving yard and over the derail at the east end of the Hinkle yard. There was the potential for a catastrophic event at Hinkle. It is not known for sure whether there were any hazardous materials in any of the cars/tanks, but there is a probability that there were. The remote operation of locomotives doesn't allow remote control operators to feel or feather their train to a smooth stop, and that was probably responsible for the break in two.