Derailment on Hell Gate back in the '80's

I seem to recall Amtrak derailing on Hell Gate back in the '80's. I don't recall the particulars, though. Anybody remember this? What was the motive power, consist, location of derailment, cause, how FDNY/NYPD responded, etc?

2 AEM7's, head on over approximately 23rd ave and 35th street.

They only banged into each other nose to nose. no cars or engines came off the track, at least so far as I recall...

Ironically it was maybe 4 or 5 blocks away from where an acela got stuck during the blackout.

Head-on.........how could that have been possible?

Sounds about right, though I didn't know all those details before. One track was definitely down at the time.

I was working a yard job at oakpoint at the time of the de-railment.

The crew I was working with were notified by the yardmaster to stop what we were doing, grab two cabooses, go to the west end of the yard and pick up some police and take them up to the scene of a de-railment on the Hell Gate Bridge.

When we accomplished this I noticed a large number of police on the other side of the tracks (Bruckner Boulevard) had gathered.

After waiting over half an hour I asked my conductor why weren't they climbing aboard as there may be some injured people up there.
He told me that two precinct's had responded and they were debating over who's precinct it was up there?

Finally they all came along and off we went.

When we arrived with the two yard switchers, SW1500s and I got to see what we were up against and I had my doubts.

Both locomotives, AEM-7s were on the ground, springs from the front trucks displaced laying on the ground and the first several cars on at least the southbound train de-railed.

We were told to go back to Oak Point, exchange the SW1500s for two B23-7s and went back to re-rail the cars. We did this in about a couple
of hours.

I'm not certain if we finished the job but our time ran out and we went back to the yard.
One passenger lost his life, a Spanish Diplomat. Mayor Ed Koch was up there as well.

One track was out of service at the time. The southbound train was running on train orders however the northbound Amtrak was put on the same track by an error of Harold tower.

The northbound engineer suffered severe enough injuries and I beleive he never returned to service.
Both were good men.

Charles

oakpoint wrote:One track was out of service at the time. The southbound train was running on train orders however the northbound Amtrak was put on the same track by an error of Harold tower.

Am I missing something, or by the fact that the s/b Amtrak was on train orders, doesn't that indicate the n/b track was in service? Or is there more at work in these situations? (i.e. trains in both directions are on train orders, as opposed to general orders)

xjqcf;

That sounds right to me xjqcf.

I think you did a better job than I explaining this. All I did was help clean up the mess.

Charles