User:Whoop whoop pull up/1980 Kelso rail accident

The 1980 Kelso rail accident occurred on the afternoon of 17 November 1980, when overloaded Union Pacific work train Extra 3119 West ran out of control while descending Cima Hill, struck the rear end of preceding train Extra 8044 West near Kelso, California, and derailed, killing three and severely injuring one of the eight crewmembers aboard the two trains. The runaway occurred due to Extra 3119 West being severely overloaded and its dispatching rushed as a result of company pressure not to delay the work train, combined with Union Pacific's inadequate training of the train's crew.

Accident
Extra 3119 West was a highly-expedited train, carrying a load of wooden railroad ties en route from Union Pacific's timber-treating plant in The Dalles, Oregon to a work site near Yermo, California. After the tie-carrying cars designated for Extra 3119 West had been cut out of the train in which they had arrived at Las Vegas and assembled into a dedicated train by yard crews, the new train had been delayed at the Las Vegas yard because the caboose designated for the train could not be operated at night, and again when it was discovered that five cars contained short ties usable only for yard tracks (necessitating that they be switched out for cars carrying proper-length ties); in an apparent attempt to compensate for the delay, the Las Vegas yardmaster performed a greatly-abbreviated inspection of the train before its departure. The movement of Extra 3119 West from Las Vegas to the crest of Cima Hill was uneventful, apart from the discovery, at some point, that the locomotive's dynamic braking was inoperative, leaving the train solely reliant on its air brake system. Due to its lack of dynamic braking, the train pulled into the north passing track at Cima at 1:29 P.M. Pacific Standard Time and stopped astride the crest of the hill to allow its crew to set up "retainers", as required by Union Pacific rules for heavy trains descending Cima Hill without dynamic braking.

Extra 8044 West (referred to in the National Transportation Safety Board's accident report as the "VAN train") had left Las Vegas over two hours after Extra 3119 West, but its higher authorized speed (70 mph versus 50 mph) allowed it to reach Cima at 1:46, only seventeen minutes behind Extra 3119 West, and, being a more-lightly-loaded train with fully-functional dynamic braking, it was allowed to proceed on down Cima Hill without having to stop at Cima to set up retainers.

The runaway
Extra 3119 West cleared the Cima north passing track at 1:59, and almost immediately ran into trouble, with the train showing only slight response to the engineer's brake inputs, and then only in the series of four alternating curves starting immediately past Cima. Recognizing that his train was in serious trouble, the engineer of Extra 3119 West made at least three radio transmissions to the Union Pacific dispatcher (at 2:09, 2:13, and 2:15) regarding his difficulty in controlling the train's speed, but received no assistance. At about 2:13-2:14, having heard the engineer's second transmission, and with the train traveling at approximately 20 mph (and having just entered a straighter, steeper segment of the line which would offer even less resistance to the train's continued acceleration), the conductor of Extra 3119 West, riding in the caboose, applied emergency braking using the caboose's brake valve. Normally, this would cause the brakes on the entire train to apply in emergency, hopefully slowing and stopping the train. However, with the train's brakepipe pressure already partially depleted by the engineer's unsuccessful attempts to slow the train, the pressure gradient induced by the application of emergency braking from the caboose was insufficient to cause the emergency brake application to propagate all the way forwards to the locomotive. As a result, the locomotive's pressure-maintaining feature (intended to prevent depletion of brakepipe pressure due to leakage) activated, causing a partial restoration of brakepipe pressure which triggered the brakes to partially release, resulting in the depletion of the train cars' emergency air reservoirs, and, within one minute, the loss of all braking capability other than that from the locomotive's independent air brake. From this point onwards, Extra 3119 West accelerated at a much higher rate than before, gaining an average of 5 mph with every passing minute (later increasing further to 6-8 mph per minute), as compared to about 1.6 mph prior to the emergency brake application. After making the emergency brake application, the conductor and flagman (also riding in the caboose) attempted unsuccessfully to decouple the caboose from the rest of the train, but did not attempt to apply the hand brakes on the caboose or the cars ahead of it.

The engineer of Extra 8044 West, approximately five miles to the west, recognized that Extra 3119 West was running out of control behind him, and received permission from the dispatcher to exceed his train's 25 mph speed limit in an attempt to outrun Extra 3119 West. However, although the Extra 8044 West engineer accelerated his train to over 75 mph, he was ultimately unsuccessful in staying ahead of Extra 3119 West, partially because the Extra 3119 West locomotive's in-cab speedometer only displayed speeds up to 80 mph (causing the engineer of Extra 3119 West to see, and report, his train's speed as 80 mph, even as it accelerated well beyond this speed), and partially because, when Extra 8044 West reached 75 mph (which occurred as it reached the east end of the Kelso passing track), its lead locomotive's overspeed-protection feature cut off power to the locomotives' traction motors, causing the train to decelerate until the engineer managed to restore power.

The collision
At 2:29, Extra 3119 West caught up with the tail of Extra 8044 West approximately five miles west of Kelso, with Extra 3119 West moving at 118 mph and Extra 8044 West moving at 80-85 mph:

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The two head-end crew of Extra 3119 West (the engineer and head brakeman) were ejected from their locomotive when the cab was destroyed by impact during the collision sequence, and both were killed instantly. Of the two crewmembers who were in the caboose of Extra 8044 West when it was struck, the conductor was killed, while the flagman was critically injured but ultimately survived. Neither of the two head-end crew of Extra 8044 West or the two crewmembers in the caboose of Extra 3119 West was injured.

Inadequate training and procedures
Additionally, Union Pacific had no emergency procedures in place for dealing with a runaway on Cima Hill, which probably played a part in the dispatcher's inaction.