2/12/44 - ASHTABULA, OHIO

4-Track mainline, automatic block signals and train stop system.

At about 2:20 AM, PRR X-476 WEST (94 cars + caboose) stopped on Tk. 3 at SS-W where the engine was cut off. This was a detour move with a PRR crew and NYC conductor and engineer pilots. Permission was received to take the engine to the yard for coal via the hand-operated maintrack trailing-point crossovers. Without waiting for the entire route to be lined, the engine crossed from Tk. 3 to Tk.1 and partially to Tk. 2, but the east switch lock of that crossover was frozen.

PASSENGER EXTRA 3137 EAST with 13 cars was moving at 70 mph on "Clear" signals on Tk.2 and struck the fouling PRR engine which was derailed. The 3137 and tender and all 13 cars of that train were derailed with the engine and tender overturned onto their left sides.

Amazingly, only the pilot engineer was killed and only 5 people were injured.

Aside from the failure top follow the rules for lining the route for the crossover movement, there was a failure to provide flag protection.

What is perhaps unusual is that the crossovers at Signal Station W (west end of Ashtabula Yard) were hand-operated. not interlocked.

As an aside, was it typical for Signal Stations on the Lake Shore to be lettered rather than numbered?

Unlike the New Haven Railroad, which was essentially small enough to be able to do their "Great Renumbering" of signal stations from one end of the railroad to the other back circa 1898, the New York Central was a collection or incorporation of other railroads and may well have been too large to do likewise.

The interlocking/signal station designations were possible holdovers from earlier times.

Whereas the Pennsy just gave everything one-syllable names which didn't necessarily have any relation to their locale.

The Pennsy guy was not a detour. The PRR moved empties over the Lake Shore between various lake ports to handle traffic coming off the great lakes. In this case moving empties from Erie to be loaded with stock pile ore at Whiskey Island in Cleveland. This saved lots of empty mileage and got more ore to the furnaces making armaments for WWII.

NKP1155,

I forgot that the PRR trackage rights for empty cars for the PRR Lake Erie docks were good westward as well as eastward.

Anybody know how many PRR locomotives were equipped with the NYC ATS apparatus?

The number (whatever it turns out to be) must also include the M-1a / AF16 locomotives kept at Southport for run-thru service to DeWitt.

Also, the locomotives that ran on the E&P rights between Girard Jct. and Dock Jct./ Erie Stn.

My dad was the conductor on the NYC train.