Downeaster collission

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TransitGeek

Service Attendant
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Nov 15, 2008
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I'm standing in the woods between Dover and Wells, trackside next to the Downeaster #681. We hit something on the tracks. The locomotive and first coach car are on fire, and one truck on the first coach derailed. No fatalities, some minor injuries. Fire department is clearing things up.
 
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Just another day during Amtrak's worst year ever?
 
Both of the gates are down and undamaged. I wonder if the truck got stuck on the crossing, or if it tried to maneuver around the gates.

The Downeaster is a push-pull train. I believe it uses former F40 cabbage's for cab cars. It looks like it was in push mode. If so, it was lucky a standard Metroliner cab wasn't being used. Things might have been much worse.
 
So am I. I'm actually starting to wonder if we're going to need to nominate a Darwin out of all of these idiot truckers (I refer broadly to the fact that there have been, I believe, four truck vs. train incidents with Amtrak this year which I can recall: The Sunset incident, the Crescent, the Zephyr, and now this).
 
According to CNN, the Amtrak train "collided" with the truck. So I guess the train drove off the tracks, found an unsuspecting truck, drug it back to the crossing and proceeded to run over/through it? :eek:hboy: I really wish media would come to reality and realize vehicles collide into trains, not the other way, unless the train derails and goes off the track and hits the vehicle when it isn't on the tracks.
 
I'm standing in the woods between Dover and Wells, trackside next to the Downeaster #681. We hit something on the tracks. The locomotive and first coach car are on fire, and one truck on the first coach derailed. No fatalities, some minor injuries. Fire department is clearing things up.
How are you doing? Anything firsthand to report?
 
No, I would say the year that holds the most Amtrak collisions, that is, the number of impacts and/or derailments is 1984. There was a head-on collision in Queens New York when a northbound Shoreliner somehow got past 'Gate' signals, and met it's southbound counterpart near the Hellgate Bridge. Then we have the lethal Montrealer washout, plus an Amfleet equipped express derailing south of Philadelphia on a heat/sun kink. One of the Silver Service trains left the tracks in the Carolinas, I remember a newspaper photo showing the Amfleet II cars teetering on their centers on top of a ballasted viaduct. The year of crashes started out with an Empire Builder hitting a truck at Wolf Point, MT and derailing.

1993 was bad for the NY to Florida Silver Star and Meteor route, in Fort Lauderdale alone. An F40 split a fuel tanker fouling the tracks, and flaming gasoline sprayed several parked cars and incinerated 5 or 6 occupants. Then the day before we were to go back to NY, a group of brats with too much time on their hands wedged a pipe into a switch frog and caused our southbound trainset that was to be used in the next day's northbound, to go on its side. Also, the then single track route was blocked, necessitating a bus bridge to Orlando.
 
Because of my planned December trip, this is the first year in which I've been observant of Amtrak activity.

Are there usually this many "incident" with train-vehicle accidents, death, etc ?

I may need see if I can book passage on board a Wells Fargo stage coach. :mellow:
 
Justin, great job of on-the-scene reporting this to our AU forum!

PRR60, one of the reports quotes a nearby witness quick on the scene: "I ran out there, and I saw skid marks from the dump truck that probably went about 300 yards, went right through the gates."

Anderson, nice pop culture reference to The Darwin Awards!

God forbid more state DPSes or highway admin agencies would have any kind of railroad crossing educational awareness program targeting trucking companies and independents (and I'm aware of Operation Lifesaver). It just appears this would be a good area of focus.

For instance, I checked the website of Maine Transportation Safety Coalition - Promoting safe transportation in Maine. That group has communications/programs about traffic safety for the blind, bicycles, pedestrians, and (I'm not making this up) moose and deer.
 
The cab car (cabbage) was at the south (rear) end of the train. It is undamaged and is still coupled to the rest of the train. You can see it at 1:23 in this clip on the NECN website.

The train was being pulled by a Genesis. The helicopter doesn't get any particularly good photos of it. It's uncoupled from the coaches and is a good distance further north.
 
PRR60, one of the reports quotes a nearby witness quick on the scene: "I ran out there, and I saw skid marks from the dump truck that probably went about 300 yards, went right through the gates."
If you look at the photo posted by Texas Sunset, both gates are intact. News videos are even clearer. Skid marks for 300 yards (900 feet) are pretty unlikely. You could stop a truck from 90 mph in 900 feet. Eyewitness reports of incidents like this are notoriously unreliable.

It is possible that he (she) saw the gate at the last minute, swerved left to get around it, and got clobbered by the train. But, there is no question that the gates were working. They are still down.
 
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