What Happened to This Runaway Train?
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- Опубликовано: 9 июн 2024
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The Santa Fe passenger train incident at Los Angeles' Union Station marked a dramatic chapter in the history of railway transportation. On that fateful day, the train, bound for its destination, encountered a catastrophic failure in its braking system, rendering it unable to stop as it approached the station platform. With its momentum unchecked, the train crashed through a concrete barrier, shattering the tranquility of the station's concourse. The deafening roar of metal meeting concrete echoed through the halls as panic ensued among passengers and bystanders. Miraculously, despite the chaos and destruction, there were no fatalities. However, the incident left an indelible mark on the collective consciousness, serving as a sobering reminder of the inherent risks associated with rail travel and prompting a renewed focus on safety protocols within the industry. In the aftermath of the event, rigorous investigations were launched, leading to the implementation of enhanced safety measures and the tightening of regulations to prevent such occurrences in the future. This historic incident at Union Station stands as a testament to the resilience of both the railway system and the human spirit, underscoring the imperative of continual vigilance in ensuring the safety of passengers and personnel alike.
IT’S HISTORY - Weekly Tales of American Urban Decay as presented by your host Ryan Socash.
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» CREDIT
Scriptwriter - Dillan Aultimate,
Editor - Karolina Szwata,
Host - Ryan Socash
Music/Sound Design: Dave Daddario
» NOTICE
Some images may be used for illustrative purposes only - always reflecting the accurate time frame and content. Events of factual error / mispronounced word/spelling mistakes - retractions will be published in this section.
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The date of the first runaway train (Santa Fe) was not mentioned in this video. It occured on January 25, 1948.
It was...you weren't paying attention!...dgp/uk
I have it on good authority that the first runaway was in Hill Valley, California, in 1885. It had engineer Clint Eastwood, who died when it went off the end of the bridge that wasn't completed to be completed at the time of the accident.
That ain't no car it's a locomotive
Cars are just another name for railway rolling stock or wagons.
@@Lanetrainz But not locomotives.
1:00 A Super Chief locomotive would not be connected to an El Capitan passenger train. Those were two separate train names. And it’s El Capitan, not El Captain.
1:28 The brakes on the locomotive failed. I doubt the brakes on the entire Santa Fe failed.
Just an additional piece of information, the Super Chief and El Capitan usually ran as one train starting in 1958.
No. 19 was the Chief, not the Super Chief or the El Capitan. The Chief was a less glamourous companion to the Super Chief.
The locomotive on the Federal was a GG-1.
Yea. Not sure why he called it a 123
PRR put that engine back in service. Amtrak would have scrapped it.
@JBDay-bd8cu Be cause he jnows nothing of the subject matter, does little or no research, does not know how to read very well, among other reasons.
The engine was not scrapped. It is preserved at the B&O railroad museum in Baltimore.
The Federal was *train* number 173. Not a detail that rarely shows up in any account I read, which tells me a good amount of research was done on the event without much understanding of railroading in general.
Transportation operators keep falling asleep at the controls because the companies keep cheating with the rules. They know you're supposed to be off duty for 8 consecutive hours, but they never factor in the time it takes to drive home, cook dinner, eat dinner, go to sleep, get ready for work, and drive back to work.
When I first started as a city bus driver, I had a route that started at 16:00, then ended at 02:00, then I had to show up the following morning by 08:00. I was woken up at 08:00 by a manager asking me where I was. I didn't know that I was scheduled to be there that early, because I didn't even know it was possible to schedule someone to be at work without 8 hours of sleep. I thought that was illegal. Had I known I was scheduled to be there at 8, I would've had to get up at 6 to be ready in time. I would've only had 4 hours of sleep.
All of their Sunday runs are like this. They have you finishing late in the evening, but you have to be up really early the following morning. On my regular route, I finish at 17:00, but have to wake up at 02:00 the next morning to be ready for my run that starts at 04:15. I was so tired and cranky, that I started not taking a shower on Mondays, just to get slightly more sleep at night.
The funny thing is, if you tell them that you can't show up because you're too tired, that counts as a sick day, but if you get in an accident due to sleep deprivation, they won't hesitate to "throw you under the bus."
White line Fever
I was in on bringing GG1 4876 to the B&O Museum in the 1990s. What Ryan related as the post-crash history of that motor is what everyone long thought happened. Recent research by some Pennsylvania Railroad historians now leads experts to believe that what the railroad meant by "rebuilt" is that some components of the locomotive were salvaged, and since it was not that old, they were not just going to write it off as a total loss, so they took a new frame and mostly new body and other new or spare components and put them back together with the parts that were salvaged from the wreck to put "A" 4876 back into service, but nowhere near most of the original unit.
Paul,
I did get to see that GG-1 at the museum and also have been down in the lower level of Washington Union Station 🚉.
It's astonishing to me what they did to get it out, put it back together and repair the station.
One tough engine.
We got 2 at the Cooperstown and Charlotte Valley Railroad.
Richard Bause.
That makes more sense!
Looks like someone needed more....TRAINING.
Stay on track now.
This has caused some confusion and delay
"Looks like someone needed more....TRAINING."
Yes, as their previous training apparently was railroaded through. Weren't there any warning lights flashing?
Guess we gotta Switch it around
@@mattsceilingfansandmore2573"Guess we gotta Switch it around"
That was on point.
No. 19 was the engine number, not the train number. The Super Chief was train No 17.
Number 19 was the Chief, not the Super Chief. The loco number is not displayed.
@@Greatdome99 The engine number is clearly "19."
@@YouSimon1000 The numberboards on passenger locomotives displayed the train number, rather than the locomotive number, which was typically painted on the side of the locomotive.
@@kosmostimber1174 True for the Southern Pacific, but not true for Santa Fe. No 19 is indeed the engine number only.
@@YouSimon1000 Oh, that's right, there are units like the one at CSRM with their actual numbers on the plates. Thanks for the correction
That's not called a lead car. It's a Locomotive
I worked with a guy who commuted on the B&O who called a passenger Geep a yard car. LOL
I grew up in San Gabriel, a few miles from Union Station. I was five years old when the El Capitan got away. I happened to be in Los Angles was with my Aunt Lois the day that it all happened. I distinctly remember passing Union Station on the way home and got a good look at the locomotive protruding through the wall. For many years you could where the wall was repaired.
There's a very famous one that happened in Paris' Gare Montparnasse in 1895.
The train overshot the tracks' end buffers, plowed through 100ft of the station concourse (which tracks were elevated), the locomotive perforated the thick front of the station's building and fell to the ground nose first, while the rest of the train still hanged from the elevated platforms.
The photos of the accident are known the world over.
It was pictured anachronically and in a romanticized way in Scorsese's "Hugo" (the movie is set in the inter-war period, around the early 30's).
Sadly, the original station no longer exists, it has been displaced by a few hundred meters and rebuilt with modern architecture, and a skyscraper now sits where the original station was.
The accident photo also ended up as the cover of Mr Big's album Lean Into It and several books.
It's appearance in Hugo wasn't anachronistic - it was a part of a Hugo's dream. As someone who works in the Gare Montparnasse station, Hugo probably already knew about the accident, and it worked it's way into his dream.
The same event inspired the Thomas and friends episode A better view for Gordon
And maybe the Santa Fe crash may have inspired Henry's crash with Hiro on the Vicarstown viaduct accident in the same show.
So, you didn't watch the video? This story, photos and all, starts at 12:44.
That one where the train landed on the escalator, it sounds to me like the operator there got railroaded. They say that she was a fill in, that she worked 10 of the past 11 days, and that the hours that she worked should have had no influence on her ability to safely operate the train. One of the problems I have with that is that just because she had the previous 18 hours off, that isn't enough time to recover and get adjusted to a normal routine. It doesn't take long to get out of whack when you're working irregular hours, but recovery time is far more, often taking several days of regular sleep patterns to get back to normal. I know, because I worked goofed out hours like that for many years. 18 hours off absolutely isn't nearly enough time, even if she had slept all the way through, which she definitely didn't. She still has a life to live and things to do in her time off besides sleep. The blame was just shifted to her because CTA had fucked up hours for some of their employees and they just didn't care enough about those employees to assure that they had ample time off to recharge before they went to work the next time. They really doubled down on excaiming that her work schedule had absolutely no bearing on why she fell asleep at the wheel, going as far as saying that she made phone calls and sent text messages when she should have been sleeping, which incedentally is none of their fucking business, but they sure hurried to implement new rules for when their drivers are and aren't allowed to work and how much time off they're required to take off before their next shift. Yeah, they really went out of their way to throw her under the bus, or train, as it were, and heap 100% of the blame on her, when in reality, it was actually 100% THEIR fault for having her work fill-in anytime someone else wasn't able to work their regularly scheduled shift.
I could not have said it better myself.
Unfortunately, this is all too common in the transportation industry.
You left out the famous 1976 Silver Streak runaway into Chicago’s Central Station. A number of famous people were involved in that disaster.
For reference, the Federal Express was traveling at 35mph at the time of impact
It wasn't 173. That's the train number. It was locomotive 4876 that was covered, cut into pieces and rebuilt.
"Ah jeez man, the president is gonna be here! What are we gonna do?"
"Just put it in the basement."
"IT'S AN 80 FOOT LONG, 475,000 POUND LOCOMOTIVE BUD, TF YOU MEAN"
"JUST DO IT."
Am I the only one who feels that “Silver streak“ should have been given an honorable mention? Cool video! Great pictures!
Agree 100%! The scene of the F7 (?) crash was inspired by the DC accident. IIRC they staged it using an old warehouse tricked out to look like a station.
@@Poisson4147 filmed in toronto canada
@@ronblack7870 👍 Thank you!
2003 Broadmeadows Runaway.
An urban electric train rolled away from Broadmeadows station in Melbourne's north, when the driver failed properly apply the handbrake when changing ends. The train rolled almost 17km with nobody on board, into Melbourne's main terminal, Spencer Street station (now Southern Cross station), where it smashed into a locomotive-hauled country train waiting at the platform.
The journey, normally scheduled for 21 minutes, took just 16 minutes, with speeds estimated up to 120km/h. 8 people were injured on the country train.
Train Numbers and Locomotive Numbers are different.... Any locomotive can power a assigned train. E.g Train 173, titled "Federal Express" was Power that day by GG-1 #4876. They didn't leave Train number 173 in the floor, they left the locomotive 4876 under the floor because they couldn't removed her in time and remove the rest of the consist, the passenger cars, away.
The Sante Fe locomotive was an F unit, I think an F7 but not sure. The paint scheme was called the Warbonnet.
It's an F3. You can tell by the high shrouded roof fans. Also it is in the original aluminum paint, not the stainless steel panels. It has 3 portholes, whereas F7A's had 2. Finally, the red warbonnet extends halfway back to include the center porthole, but on the F7A, the bonnet only went back to the first porthole.
"Chicken wire" F3.
I wonder if Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor were on board the first one, or the one that ran into DC.
"Red Bull Gives You Wings", may not be suitable for billboards near rail lines?
Here's a fun fact about CTA accidents. Everyone knows if a CTA bus or train has an accident, there's going to be payouts. So if a bus or train accident happens, there's always more passengers on the train or bus *after* the accident than *during* the accident.
It was a common problem finally becoming a joke. The first thing investigators had to do was determine if the person on the accident vehicle was actually in the vehicle when it was in an accident.
I'm sure it wasn't limited to Chicago. But it sure happened a lot, lol....
In September 1972, the first line of the new BART system, opened in the San Francisco Bay Area. At the time, this new system was considered revolutionary, because of its computer-controlled trains. Less than a month after the opening, the computer glitched, sending a train off the end of the track. A train was entering the Fremont terminal, when the computer caused it to accelerate, rather than brake. The train crashed through the end bumper, and the lead car went down the embankment. No one was killed, but several people were injured.
This was caused by a defective crystal oscillator in the train control system, which sent an incorrect speed command and accelerated the train as it reached the end of the line.
Santa Fe F-units rebuilt as CF7s did not continue to haul passengers across the U.S.A. - they were freight locomotives!
You never mentioned the derailment in Quebec a few years back?!?!
Thx Ryan! 🚂🚈
Love the looks of the old streamliners.
There was a similar accident in hungary in 1962, a train had a runaway accident at a station, and went completely through the walls out to a road
Something about the history of Jersey City, NJ, the second largest city in the state. Hasn’t been covered very much on this channel…
I never heard this before and I'm totally amazed that it did happen. I love trains but right now I'm speechless.
Good episode! Glad you had more details on the Washington Station crash with the GG-1.
I liked that GG1 electric loco that could only be removed in pieces! They were such characterful locomotives! Thanks for the video.
You should look into the steam train crash at Harcourt St. Station in Dublin Ireland on Valentines Day 1900. The photos are incredible 😮
Dude, that's off the rails!
Only about half off the rails, by the looks of it.
Nice video
Bonus catastrophe at 13:08 when "Gare Montparnasse" is destroyed by the narrator. He plowed through the station completely unprepared for the task.
Gare Montparnasse was a terminal, not a station
@@FadkinsDiet - Thanks for mentioning Montparnasse is a terminal station.
Look at the Willowbrook Ballroom, Resurrection Cemetery and a lady named merry. 😉.
When I worked for WMATA. We called are terminals an End Of Line Station.
What are "are" terminals? A TERMINAL IS THE END OF THE LINE. The facility there is the station.
Don’t forget the New York city transit authority back in the 50s where the Jamaica Avenue line at 168th St. standards Randy and Bankman auto block stopper and was sticking out halfway over the elevator structure
Nice job Guys 💯😊😁
It is truly miraculous how the fatalities were virtually spotless (despite the lady being killed at the very end). A lot of these accidents these locomotives and trains seem to go airborne. The train that landed on the sculpture of a whale's tail... like that needs to be a story in and of itself. LOL
There were the two quite horrific runaway-train crashes with one in Paris (where an inexperienced operator disconnected the brakes on each carriage after a problem), & the earlier one in the London Underground in the '60s (crashing into the blind-tunnel at the end of the platform), in which many were killed & even more left with terrible injuries!
At the time of the Santa Fe locomotive overrunning the end of track, the proper name of the facility was Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal (LAUPT), *not* "Union Station". Railroad passenger facilities in which tracks do not run through the station were called "terminals".
No derail device on the tracks
The train on the escalator tracks looks like the subway scene from Die Hard with a Vengeance.
I remember that. My first thought on seeing that was, "DAMN, that is a well-made escalator!"
Interesting info regarding the crash at Union Station in DC. As a local, I never knew there was a train crash there and then they rushed to clean it up. Great job SoCash.
Nice Job. 👍🏼
It's crazy that first train didn't break the electrical wiers.
Wiers were tougher then. 😎
@@Poisson4147 that's not what he said
@bajaboy27 Hey, wiers have had a huge impact on humanity 😳. I think 🤔
@@bajaboy27 I'm referring to his inability to spell a simple word like "wires",
@@Poisson4147 gotta keep auto correct on at all times, some of us are dealing with an entire keyboard in rectangle 1.5x3inch 😵💫
What Happened to This Runaway Train? It would not surprise me if Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor had something to do with this.
It ran into the Marshall Fields.
CTA dispatcher: ok now once you get the train moving you dont have to do anything except for apply the breaks driver : ok... which one is the breaks again? imma go to sleep.
Wow! I remember the Chicago ones …. But have never seen pictures of the others. Amazing!
Should have covered St Paul Mn runaway on Valentine’s Day in the 1990s. That kinda fits in here.
I remember that one. That didn't run through a station, though.
The story of the Silver Streak.
I came to say the same thing.
Yes - inspired by the DC crash. I read about how the scene was staged for the film. Fascinating stuff.
Richard Pryor, Gene Wilder. RIP to two GREAT funnymen.
More like Brown Streak!
😂
@@Poisson4147 They definitely were great. I also loved them in "See No Evil, Hear No Evil".
@@l4xx03luyf6l0to That movie was hilarious. One of my favorites.
There's no such thing as a "terminal station." It's either one, or the other.
Correct. And at that time it was a Terminal. Now however, it can be classified as a "station" since the metro "A Line" runs through it going between Long Beach and Azusa.
What if the route ends, but the train loops around the station? Could that be a bit of both? This was the case in Cleveland, OH for the Regional Transit Authority (RTA) electrical passenger trains. This turnaround was removed years ago and now the trains just reverse direction, since they can be driven from either end.
Sounds like the story of loco in motion
"Terminal" can refer to the station at the beginning or end of the train's route. "Origin Terminal" or "Destination Terminal".
Geesh. Go dangle your participle
Today Santa Fe Railway is now BNSF Railway since 1996
The type of locomotive in the Federal Express crash was a GGI
"Luckily, no one was hurt."
Trivia: During its entire 50 something year life, no crew member ever died in a GG1.
funny there was a "no parking" sign near the first train
Hello from Kansas 🇺🇲
Incredible my brother keep up the great work very informative truly truly great thank you
I remember seeing the LAUPT ATSF derailment on TV when I was a kid. Sometime during the mid '50's.
Could it have been as early as 1948? Another commenter gave that year.
@@sturmovik1274 You're right! There was another ATSF train derailment in '56 killing 30 people & injuring 117. It was the first major disaster covered on live TV which did not occur at Union Station
According to the Interstate Commerce Commission, the '56 wreck was at a junction in Redondo and was caused by excessive speed through a curve.@@squalli1297
so it was THIS train that ran over the guy on the wall while he was Tobowing in that Meme Safety Video on South Park.
For some reason, I just love the old GG-1’s !
This piece was very fascinating Ryan! Thank you for bringing us this interesting story 💙🙏🏼
My pleasure!
Saved by the whales tale Thanks for Sharing.👍😎👍
Curious but why couldn't the engineer use the GG1s electric motors like a dynamic brake to slow the train. Was that ability something that hadn't been introduced yet?
They did have the ability. The engineer did reverse them when the train had slowed to about 35-40 mph, but the strain of being reversed at full power at that speed drew so much power that each motor's circuit breakers opened.
Don’t forget the New York city transit authority or the (BMT)back in the 50s where the Jamaica Avenue line at 168th St. subway standards cars hit the block stopper and lead car coming into the last stop was sticking out halfway over the elevated structure
The plural of “incident” is “incidents”, not “incidences” (which does not mean the same thing…). Great video!
There was a runaway unoccupied freight train in NW Ohio in the 90s in believe. I had to laugh because a Highway Patrolmen fired his shotgun at the engine trying to hit the fuel cutoff switch, a button on the side. didn't work
The trooper was told the EFCO button was red, but was not told it was next to the much larger red fuel fill cap, which is what he shot at and put a nearly perfect triangle of bullets into.
CSXT 666!
@@paulw.woodring7304 Thanks. Didn't know that.
@@marktaylor9975 it was CSX 8887
Crazy 8s
Imagine being the engineer driving that train!
😂
Man that photo of the train crash is terrifying 😨😓😨😓😨😓😨😓😨😓😨😓😨😓😨😓
I rode the Super Chief in 1968. Great memory.
I'm jealous. I've ridden the Empire Builder, the Capitol Limited and the Zephyr over part of its route, but I do wish I'd been alive for the old streamliners. Next big trip will be the Chief to the Grand Canyon!
So now we know the inspiration for the ending of “Silver Streak”.
Don't forget about the CTA crash " L " when the train was rounding a corner at excessive speed and came crashing down to the street. This was back in the 1960's or 1970's. I believe it took place in the " Loop ".
I'm guessing that was the one that was shown in the picture when he first started talking about the CTA, though I'm not sure.
@@katherinec2759 You are correct.
2:00 that utility pole must be some quality material !!
A little disappointed that you didn't tell the tail of unstoppable. The true story is CSX8888.
Ah yes, crazy eights. That one deserves its own video.
I wonder if anyone remembers the Amtrak crash in Washington State, just a few years ago. It occurred shortly after a new, high-speed bypass for passenger trains had opened. This new line was designed for trains traveling at 70 to 80 mph. However, someone had designed a 30 mph curve on that line, right where the tracks crossed Interstate 5. Compounding the problem, the curve was not properly marked in advance. There was not enough distance between this first warning, and the curve. Train engineers testified that they had to simply "know" about the curve, to start slowing in time. An engineer, not familiar with the curve, was still traveling at near 80 mph, when he saw the first warning sign. The train derailed at the curve, and some of the cars fell onto the interstate highway, below.
In that wreck, 3 people were killed. One was a railfan on the first trip. The other two were Washington State rail passenger advocates, one of whom, Zack Wilholite, was someone I had previously met on various trips to the Pacific Northwest.
Yeah, on the Point Defiance Bypass. I was in Washington visiting my future wife when it happened. I remember seeing it on the news right after the crash. Anytime I’m traveling between Olympia and Seattle on I-5, I look at the overpass it crashed from.
There were the two quite horrific runaway-train crashes with one in Paris (where an inexperienced operator disconnected the brakes on each carriage after a problem), & the earlier one in the London Underground in the '60s (crashing into the blind-tunnel at the end of the platform), in which many were killed & even more left with terrible injuries!
A large photo of this is on the wall at Philippe (the place where the french dip sandwich originated) 2 blks north of Union Station on Alameda , since the '40s .
The CTA train derailed up onto the platform and escalator not the sidewalk. Otherwise this is good stuff!
I totally forgot about this, I painted a picture of the color version of this photo.
It got a parking ticket for parking in a restricted space.
A terminal station is either where a train stops at an air port or the last station on the line of the railway or the flagship main station
True for passengers. For freight railroads, a terminal is any yard where crews go on or off duty.
A 19 year old train engineer
Here we go, another train video. Awesomeness, great video. I just Subscribed to your Eat's History channel, looks cool. Superb Ryan
Awesome! Thank you!
How about histories of toxic spills in various waterways
What was even stranger was that the loco changed from a E unit to an F unit 😅
How about inner urban rail transportation. I remember seeing old concrete power pole bases in prospect Oh. Rail car garage is in Delaware off of Sandusky St. Worlys plumbing supplies.
THE SANTA FE LOCOMOTIVE WEIGHED
APROXIMATELY 240,000 POUNDS!
2016 Hoboken train crash
You missed a big one. A very recent one. The derailment that was one of the biggest I recently history. It happened in and around DuPont Washington. You guys should look it up there was a few fatalities and a lot of injured.
The wait tail should have a little metro glued on to it now
The person is called an engineer when running a locomotive not a driver. We are not England.
The loc at 0:20 is this the same as pictured at 1:28,
Back when LA was not a shithole.
The model of the engine was a gg1 not a 173
first thing that came to mind seeing the picture of the engine was, You can't park there.
Well, at least they were on time
If they'd landed on a clock the jokes would have been endless.
If you hear the train coming, if it's rolling down the line, you best get out of the way if you want to see the sunshine. also, don't shoot anyone in Reno.
End up in Folsom