Re: More new RGS photos - bad week for private cars (link)

Chris, I have to agree with you the orientation of the train looks to be headed toward Placerville as the hillside is above the track which you can see in the linked Google views that you provided coordinates for, sure looks to be Milepost 21 or thereabouts:

RGS Mile Post 21

Street view from Hwy 62 of Mile Post 21


North toward Ridgway would be to the right in the views...I can’t get the train direction from the photos to make sense either

Now Dave Grandt’s posting of the Telluride newspaper account confirms that this indeed was the morning passenger train # 8 headed Northbound toward Ridgway when it derailed. I am somewhat skeptical of the news account details as the article states they were provided by an newspaper employee who was stranded in Ridgway, so not an eye witness and the paper seems to have an axe to grind with RGS management to say the least...

Class 60 C-16 # 12 was rated for 112 tons Placerville to Dallas Divide (3% grade) so with the four cars she was pulling would have been a little more than ½ of that maximum. Now we don’t know if there were other mechanical issues like sanders not working, frost or ice on the rails etc. so perhaps the report in the paper was the train was backing down grade after slipping when it tipped over? That is hard to understand as they would have already passed over the “kink” at Mile Post 21 and then slid back over it derailing the train? Maybe someone has another explanation as to what may have occurred. The fact that Supt. Lee’s relief train derails only a mile further on from MP 21 after heading back to Ridgway with the stranded passengers (some of whom are now injured jumping out the Edna’s windows?) is revealing as well about the track conditions.

I talked to Dell McCoy of Sundance today to find out where his narrative of the event he wrote on page 145 of RGS Story Vol. X came from. His recollection was it was from Boyd A. Gibson who provided the photo of the derailment on the same page. Emmett Gibson is listed as an RGS employee during this point in time so he may have been the one to take the photos and pass on the narrative of events to his son? Boyd?. I told Dell there have been enough new RGS photos discovered in the past week to start another Volume (13) of the RGS Story but he stated someone else would have to take on that job

He still has an inventory of books which he is selling out of his basement so we should all support him as I can’t think of anyone who has done more to document the history of the RGS (and other RR’s) than Dell McCoy and Russ Coleman. Are these guys in the Narrow Gauge Hall of Fame? If not, somebody should get busy and make it happen, soon.

Rod

Here is the Sundance address:

Sundance Publications
221 Sherman Street
Denver, CO 80203
303-777-2880
303-778-1286 Fax



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/09/2013 06:30PM by rod.