That's some serious damage right there, I understand where there was a limit on train lengths. I'd image if you got close or over the 70 car limit you could risk breaking couplers, or pulling the Janney out of the frame entirel. Did you ever happen to capture any other instances of antique equipment being pushed beyond its breaking point?
You should consider yourself lucky you got to see all this and capture the end of operations, I would kill to be born six or seven decades ago when steam was truly king. Thank you for sharing your stories and photographs Mr. West; I really appreciate it and reading them is a blast. I guess you actually do learn something new every day!