MoW: Side Booms

Midwest Railroad Photography posted

Their comment:

BNSF Derailment

BNSF 6387 leans badly after running through the derail at ISU on the BNSF Ottumwa Subdivision. Here are a few shots of Amtrak #6 passing the site, as well as Hulcher at work. Chillicothe, IA 1/28/2016. -Justin   HiDef(Flickr)

This Flickr image is the beginning of a sequence of pictures showing Hulcher cleaning up a derailing. A side boom is a bulldozer body that has a boom on one side and a counterweight on the other. They were developed for laying pipeline, but I have noticed that most train-wreck contractors now use them instead of more traditional cranes.

Mark Harvey The power plant crew ran the empty train through a split point derail. Derail did its job, all six axles of the lead were on the ground, the second was about 12" from the end of the rail. Got lucky on that one.

A locomotive does not hit the split point derail unless the train passed a signal that should have been displaying absolute stop. The derail is controlled by the interlocking plant along with the signals and turnouts. It did its job of keeping an effectively run-a-way train from fouling the mainline. Some comments explained Amtrak was on the close track because the other main was blocked by another coal train.

Midwest Railroad Photography posted (Flickr)

This picture from the above collection is of particular interest because you can see the counterweight on the unit on the left that has no load is straight up. But the counterweight of the unit on the right that is lifting a load is extended to compensate for the weight of the load.

Bill DeMar posted

Update: Bill's comments:

The drop table at Amtrak's 16th Street diesel shop Chicago was down for repairs, so track 11 is the temp table. P -42 #199 is having a traction motor change out.

Chicago has a 40 ton overhead crane , enough to change out a prime mover. A P-42's weight is about 284,284 pounds, to much for the overhead.