Re: C&TS Shop Work

My luck with the Georgetown operation was to be on my one and only trip on that operation when the train I was on had a wreck, I think the first serious accident they had. The handrails on the caboose snagged a wire on the powerline that crossed the tracks and pulled the high tension lines into the train. It was a spectacular display of sparks and flashes of electricity, and breaking power pole as the lines tore into the roof of the car in front of the caboose. The fact that there was a wedding party on that car and the caboose, the bride in her white gown, everyone sipping champagne, all added up to quite a sight.
Fortunately, the engineer was seeing all this happen and brought the train to a stop in short order. No one was injured, and since we were almost in the Georgetown station, we got off the the train and walked to our cars in the adjacent parking lot. Power was knocked off clear on the other side of the Eisenhower Tunnel. Shortly before this there had been a nasty crash of a Delta Airlines plane in Texas and I had mentioned to my relatives in Denver that I was going for a "safe" train ride. At least I was able to walk away from the train incident.