Jackson Alexander
Don't Confuse Your Train Orders
It's hard to sit here by Little Greenwood and imagine the total calamity involved with a head on train collision in the 1910s. I mean hell, it's hard to imagine this railroad running enough trains to have head on collisions after getting used to watching the brass cancel trains for being 0.7 tons below the arbitrary threshold where the shareholders don't think trains are worth it to run.
Nonetheless, at one point in time this railroad was one of the busiest in the entire country. Imagining running 50+ trains a day on track warrants is hard enough for me, let alone nothing but train orders. With that in mind, it isn't hard to figure out how easy it was to have a few small mistakes result in the loss of life. Long before quick emergency response, reliable lines of communication, or modern medicine, it's a wonder how many people managed to survive the "Great Onawa Train Wreck".
It's a very serene place out here, and anyone who visits might not know of the once horrific day many experienced here unless they trespass a little bit to find the marker stone still there to this day. Nowadays however, running an extra ballast train doesn't require fitting it around the schedule of your mainline freight. It just requires cancelling your trains, running it unimpeded east and back west, and resuming normal operations afterward as if there was never any freight stacking up on either side of the railroad.
On that note, here is the aforementioned ballast train running by Little Greenwood Pond and the wreck site itself. There are no train orders with meets to confuse for this crew, as they had the entire sub to themselves all the way to Jackman. The majority of the dumping process occurred the day prior and they are simply highballing it to Jackman to dump a few more cars before handing the train off to the Quebecoise for the return back to Canada. Heading the train is a freshly painted SD60, the first to lead over here in many years.
After clicking my shutter, I exchanged a wave with the engineer and turned to watch yet another of presumably thousands of trains since December of 1919 pass the site of the great wreck.
Don't Confuse Your Train Orders
It's hard to sit here by Little Greenwood and imagine the total calamity involved with a head on train collision in the 1910s. I mean hell, it's hard to imagine this railroad running enough trains to have head on collisions after getting used to watching the brass cancel trains for being 0.7 tons below the arbitrary threshold where the shareholders don't think trains are worth it to run.
Nonetheless, at one point in time this railroad was one of the busiest in the entire country. Imagining running 50+ trains a day on track warrants is hard enough for me, let alone nothing but train orders. With that in mind, it isn't hard to figure out how easy it was to have a few small mistakes result in the loss of life. Long before quick emergency response, reliable lines of communication, or modern medicine, it's a wonder how many people managed to survive the "Great Onawa Train Wreck".
It's a very serene place out here, and anyone who visits might not know of the once horrific day many experienced here unless they trespass a little bit to find the marker stone still there to this day. Nowadays however, running an extra ballast train doesn't require fitting it around the schedule of your mainline freight. It just requires cancelling your trains, running it unimpeded east and back west, and resuming normal operations afterward as if there was never any freight stacking up on either side of the railroad.
On that note, here is the aforementioned ballast train running by Little Greenwood Pond and the wreck site itself. There are no train orders with meets to confuse for this crew, as they had the entire sub to themselves all the way to Jackman. The majority of the dumping process occurred the day prior and they are simply highballing it to Jackman to dump a few more cars before handing the train off to the Quebecoise for the return back to Canada. Heading the train is a freshly painted SD60, the first to lead over here in many years.
After clicking my shutter, I exchanged a wave with the engineer and turned to watch yet another of presumably thousands of trains since December of 1919 pass the site of the great wreck.