I Carry A Camera

True Stories of the NMRO Railfan Patrol

Dedicated to all intrepid explorers......

Never Say Never...

Most of you are familiar with the fact that all cars handled on Amtrak trains must meet Amtrak's tough code of mechanical requirements. If a car does not have all those mechanical upgrades and thorough inspections, Amtrak will NEVER haul it. Or will they?....

It was just a few years ago that the town of White River Jct., VT was holding its annual 'Glory Days of the Railroad' festival, which always featured several pieces of equipment from Amtrak and other surrounding railroads. This particular year was no different as the townsfolk had requested that Green Mountain Railroad send their oldest piece of passenger equipment to place on display. A bit of history first...

GMRC combine #260 began life as a Rutland (or perhaps one of the predesessor roads, nobody is certain) 74 seat, gas light illuminated, coach built in 1891 by the Wagner Car Company as #700. In 1921 the Rutland converted the six-wheel truck coach into a four-wheel truck, 42 seat, combination coach/baggage car and renumbered it #260. It was used in regular passenger service on the Rutland from 1921 until 1947 almost exclusively on the Rutland to Boston runs via B&M's Cheshire Branch. After restrictions were placed on wood-bodied passenger cars in interchange service, the 260 was withdrawn and converted for use as a riding car caboose where it was used primarily on the Rutland to Chatham, NY runs. Some of the seats were removed and a coal stove was installed to replace the original steam heat and this is how the car is configured today. After the demise of the Rutland, the 260 was sold to F. Nelson Blount of Steamtown fame and saw regular service on the Green Mountain as a heated car in the winter, originally with a coal stove and (near the end on GMRC) forced hot water baseboard, as extra fare overflow capacity car mainly in the summer and fall seasons. Thusly, over 100 years from when she was built, she was still performing revenue passenger chores, perhaps earning the title as the oldest revenue passenger car in the country. In December, 2013 the 260 finally left her home rails in Vermont and now resides at the Railroad Museum of New England in Thomaston, CT where she will be permanently preserved in a museum quality environment for all to see and appreciate and perhaps ride on as well on special occasions. Now, back to our story...

The 260 was received warmly in White River Junction at the Glory Days festival, having been brought there in a deadhead equipment move by a New England Central locomotive and crew. Also on display was Amtrak's equipment, a brand new GE P40 locomotive, a veteran EMD FL-9 locomotive and several Amfleet, Heritage and Superliner cars. Eventually it came time for the festival to end and return the equipment to its proper homes. Since the Amtrak equipment was going to pass through Bellows Falls (40 miles to the south) anyway, the logical idea was to add the 260 to the Amtrak consist for the journey back home.

So it was..... That on a pleasant Saturday evening, not so many years ago, that a strange sight was beheld by folks standing trackside as an off schedule Amtrak train came wizzing through the sleepy villages on its way south along the Connecticut River Valley. There at the rear, following the shiny stainless steel and aluminum long distance Amtrak equipment, came a wooden bodied 1891 combine in Rutland Railroad lettering, wizzing through hill and valley at passnger train speed. Kerosene markers, friction bearings and all.......

Never say never.......

UNSTOPPABLE!

It was....

sunny and cool in the city of the little engines and a stiff wind was blowing out of the northwest. My partner and I were assigned routine patrol on the daywatch around the Connecticut River valley. His name is Evans mine's Whitney, and I carry a camera.

We started our patrol in the vicinity of Claremont Jct. This was back when the Central Vermont Railway still owned the line prior to its sale to New England Central. We were awaiting the arrival of southbound train 324 which was due to pick up a car from the Claremont Concord Railroad. We set up our lookout post near the crossing and across from the former depot. At our disposal was our NMRO 'big gun' Panasonic video camera.

The normal procedure, for the move the train was to make, would be for them to stop the train north of the interlocking at Claremont Jct. and drop their train there and then pass through to the hand throw switches for the interchange. This day was different and for some reason the dispatcher had forgotten to line the switch and signal for that movement. In such an instance there are two ways to proceed. One would be to wait the full seven minutes for the signals to 'time out' and then make the move. A quicker way is to accept the signal as shown and then (with permission) back out of the interlocking which would then be immediately available to be reset to the correct route.

Today's move was to be the latter and we were somwhat surprised to see the locomotives heading toward us on the main track, until we understood what was going on. The engines stopped within the interlocking and then reversed their move toward their train. They passed north of the interlocking and then kept going and going and going........

A voice over the scanner broke our stunned silence: "Do you see 'em yet?" "Nope, they're gone!" was the excited reply. We had a runaway in progress!!!

Let me pause here to explain why the train ran away... The crew's normal habit, in order to save time, was to bottle the air (close BOTH angle cocks at the point where the train is to be parted, instead of just toward the engines, thus trapping the air in the rear portion of the train). After parting the train, the crewman would then partly open the angle cock on the standing cut in order to let air eascape. This is supposed to keep the air brakes from going into emergency and requiring longer to pump up again after recoupling. However, there is a very present danger in that practice with today's brake systems. The ABDW brake is designed to take emergency resevoir air and admit it into a brake pipe to help quickly recharge a train line. All it takes is an slight increase in train line air pressure to cause one ABDW brake to release and cause a chain reaction to release a whole train. This is what CV train 324 experienced at Claremont Jct.

As fast as we could, we were code three in hot pursuit of a train running away backward toward Windsor, VT, video camera rolling the whole time. Our first attempt at an intercept was at Balloch crossing, about four miles north of Claremont. Unfortunately, the train was rolling too fast to do anything about it. We followed the train as best we could until we could reach it at Windsor.

At Windsor, as fate would have it a CV track maintainer was working on a rail joint near the station. Very fortunate indeed was the fact that he had a spot close enough to the main line to reach his work without having to have his very large truck on the main with its hyrail gear. The maintainer heard the crew's conversation with the dispatcher and removed his cables from the path of the errant train.

Windsor itself sits at the bottom of a bowl so there was no danger of the train proceeding much further up the line. The only danger was that of striking someone at any one of several crossings within the town. By the time the last few cars were aproaching the point at which we were standing on the Windsor Station platform, it had slowed enough to allow me to grab a handle on the next to the last car and swing aboard. A quick trip up and over the top of the car allowed me to reach the only partially open angle cock and dump the air from the train's brakepipe. Soon after the cut of cars stopped, the head end of the train showed up to retrieve it.

The aftermath of the story is almost as interesting.... The crew thanked me for the assistance and we went on our merry way. A few days later I related the story to some of the folks at work and one of them had a later conversation about the incident with a CV official. The response at that end was: "What runaway?!?" The story was related, and some folks got some time off. I got something for my heroic action also... I got a CV hat. [Whoopie...zzzzz]

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