I was on #5, in Glenwood Canyon right B4 Christmas, I wanna say 1988(?) In the diner, chewing the fat with the crew, and another railfan, (all I remember is that he was an NFL referee) so scanners and radios were everywhere. As I recall, the diner was towards the rear of the train. (prolly just separating the coaches and sleepers like now)
I was going to take the Pioneer to Oregon, but we never made it out of the canyon. We heard the engineer YELL "...@#$^ BIG HOLE" which we all knew meant he'd just put the train into emergency.
A few seconds later it was bumpity-bumpity-bumpity over the RR ties, and then stop. Lights out (HEP became disconnected mid-train) We were kind of at a scary side-ways tip, with the rock wall to our left, and the Colorado River to our right, our VERY, VERY, CLOSE right. (it was magnified by angle that the Superliner was tipped. But I tell ya, it wasn't too far down to the river, and it was a pretty steep embankment. VERY similar to
THIS PHOTO.
We could see the road across the river, or at least headlights, cause this happened after diner if I recall. And there we sat,
for hours.
The D&RGW cobbled together a "rescue train" made up of existing cabooses, I mean it was a whole train of cabooses and flatcars, and camp cars. (cause they sent a crew in too) But it was daylight B4 that train backed towards us. I do remember that the cabooses had kerosene heaters, fired up for warmth, in them.
The most negative thing I remember was some STOOPID attorney-passenger going car-to-car, handing out his business cards. I followed him for three or four cars, and was telling people "DON'T TRUST THIS AMBULANCE CHASER" God I was pissed off.
NO ONE was injured as I recall. Shaken, scared, nervous, but that was about it. I'm sure someone "twisted an ankle" or something walking along the ballast from the Zephyr to the work train, but the D&RGW employees basically made a "tunnel" of employees to guide the pax to the cabooses.
When we got to Gleenwood Springs, we got on Motorcoaches, and headed back to Denver Union Station. There Amtrak personnel handed us CASH, and an airline ticket to our final destination.
For a railfan it was exciting, not too scary after things settled down, and very, very interesting.
That morning we rode the Motorcoaches back to Denver, we traveled the same highway we had seen across the river from the train, and saw the work train in the process of cleaning #5's cars from the track.
Almost ten years earlier to the day, I was leaving Aspen, CO on a GreyLine bus to Glenwood Springs, and the bus was head-on'd by a pick-up truck, killing the driver, and injuring most of us on the bus. When I regained consciousness, I remember pushing out the emergency window on the bus, to drop down to the ground. The bus was in a ditch, so it was quite a long drop, but nothing like the pax on # 5 from the Superliner must have had on Friday................
Needless to say, and others have heard this from me before, I am
not ever flying into Glenwood Springs!
