Derailment in Aurora, NY

[Chris333]

[Point353]

Looks like the train was diverted onto a dead-end siding that ends just before the bridge.
B&P is suggesting that vandalism may have been the cause.

[davefoxx]

Must have been a hell of a ride for the crew.

DFF

[Chris333]

If you look here you can see the short siding:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/East+Aurora,+NY+14052/@42.7673563,-78.6120331,167a,35y,90h/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x89d3a6ee1f4499a3:0xd3ca79492e0afaf6!8m2!3d42.7678376!4d-78.6133589

[Maletrain]

It looks like that bridge was originally built for double track.  That is probably why it contained the train over the roadway.  Good thing, or that railroad equipment probably would have been on the road, on top of some people in their cars.

[davefoxx]

One thing that I find surprising is that, in the video, the road underneath is still open!

DFF

[C855B]

One thing that I find surprising is that, in the video, the road underneath is still open!

Ditto!

[Philip H]

One thing that I find surprising is that, in the video, the road underneath is still open!

DFF

I'm not.  Having railfanned that area some years ago I can tell you that US 20 is a major artery in that part of western NY and its doesn't generally close for much of anything. Had the train jumped the bridge or spilled something that was leaking it might have, but its not a Run 8 part of the B&P's territory to begin with and the tank cars are intact, so no need until they go to remove from the bridge.

[davefoxx]

You must be right, Philip, because, clearly, they're actively cleaning up the derailment in that video.  Did anyone notice the earthen ramp that they built to get access to the motive power?  They must have moved the lead unit into that position, because that ramp wasn't there at the time of the derailment.  I wonder where it actually ended up.

DFF

[Point353]

Did anyone notice the earthen ramp that they built to get access to the motive power?  They must have moved the lead unit into that position, because that ramp wasn't there at the time of the derailment.  I wonder where it actually ended up.

[Angus Shops]

One thing that I find surprising is that, in the video, the road underneath is still open!

DFF

Canadian National has a wood trestle with a swing span that crosses the north arm of the Fraser River between Burnaby and Richmond BC. On the north bank (the Burnaby side) there is a well used pedestrian pathway that passes under the rail bridge right on the bank of the river. One day I came across this spot and found that a train had derailed quite spectacularly on the bridge with most cars upright on the bridge, but a with couple of empty auto racks in the river - quite a mess. CN had brought in a couple of floating cranes to rerail the upright cars. But nobody had thought to close the trail under the bridge. They were actually lifting and rerailing cars right over the heads of pedestrians. I called our parks dept. (I work for Burnaby) and they came roaring down and closed the trail, but I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. This was a timber trestle, with no protection on the sides and you could see up between the ties to watch the workers slinging cables and etc. It took a couple of hours before they finished  up and the train left and the cranes moved on and the barricades on the trail came down and everything went back to normal - excerpt for the auto racks sticking out of the river. I guess they came back for those later.
Geoff

[Jbub]

I wonder if any of the drivers noticed something amiss on the tracks above when passing under the bridge.

[reinhardtjh]

Here's a time lapse video of walking one of the engines back up the embankment

Here's a not so time-elapsed video of it.  I started tried to start the video a little into it to skip the gawd-awful "Tank Commander" intro.  You're welcome.  Skip ahead 18-20 seconds to miss it.  Sorry.  The first few minutes show it's not always smooth sailing putting one of these up on the tracks again.  At one point one of the walker dozers almost tips over.

[John]

I alwasy get a good chuckle out of the guys running around trying to direct the truck drivers .. you know they aren't watching them