In the "Red Devil" book, the author was a big advocate of running with a wide open throttle, to the point that he would equip the engines he modified with new throttle racks that only had notches in the closed and wide open positions. Any engineer who wanted to run with a partially open throttle could by God hold it there the whole trip.
An engineer supporting that school of thought demonstrated the practicality of it by working a shift flat switching a yard by opening the throttle wide at the beginning of his shift, then physically removing the throttle lever for the day. Reportedly, he ran the rest if the day relying on the brakes and reverse exclusively. I don't recall if the engine had a Johnson bar or a screw reverse (I expect a screw reverse), but I'm sure it wasn't a power reverse. There was no report on how smooth the switching went that day.
So, a collapsed dry pipe doesn't have to be a world ending event if the engineer is prepared for it. It could be advisable for engineers to practice controlling an engine with the throttle opened wide on some vacant yard track just so they know what to expect.