by CPSmith
... and the next morning, you wake up next to this:
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Railroad Forums
Moderator: Otto Vondrak
BR&P wrote:October 26, 1946Very interesting that you mention that.. I've always been creeped out walking class 1 brake tests along that stretch of track at night and the other R&S guys would often tell stories of seeing things and hearing things. Brooks Avenue's yard office and Lincoln Park are especially creepy. Do you have any other excerpts about facilities on the BR&P/B&O in the Rochester area?
A sad day on the B&O. A road crew arrived from East Salamanca in the pre-dawn darkness. The 2 steam engines went to the far end of Brooks Avenue yard and nosed onto their caboose, and shoved it through thick fog toward Lincoln Park. A short distance north on the Chili Avenue overpass, a crew member of another train saw the dark shape approaching and mistook it for his own power, and lined a switch into a siding. The road train left the main and collided with a standing cut of cars, totally demolishing the caboose. The conductor and flagman were injured, and two brakemen in the caboose - Walter Veite and Willard Wesch, lost their lives.
BR&P wrote:BR&P/B&O was like any other railroad, it had its share of fatalities and incidents. I actually am working (sporadically) on a list of BR&P employee fatalities. Some of them are strange by today's standards - boiler explosions, falling off the top of a boxcar - and others are things that still kill people today - walking between cars just as they begin moving, getting off a train and being struck by movement on an adjacent track.The yard off at Brooks was a very creepy place to be in at night, you could hear footsteps walking around upstairs when the door was locked, you could hear talking coming from the basement and if you were walking out to your car in the middle of the night you could swear that someone was watching you from the top of the yard office. It's hard to imagine walking in the exact spot that somebody died in... One of the creepiest spots on the entire line (and many other railroaders on the R&S agree) was Crocker North along the old Genesee Leroy Stone. Many people talk of "Frank" the guy who died after going over the quarry in a snowmobile. Idk if it's just the abandoned buildings or the inherent desolation of the location but it's not the coziest place to have to do a brake test..
During the 40's a B&O dispatcher passed away right at the desk. in 1897 there was a head-on between Leroy and DL&W Jct involving a snowplow, conductor & brakeman killed. If you work the road job, take a moment next time you round Gayton's Curve, take your hat off for Louis Franks, a fireman killed in a wreck there. How about Train 28 taking the siding at Lime Rock and they can't find brakeman Harry Munger? Went to P&L and made a report, took the train to Garbutt and then took the engine back to look for him. They found him at Beaver Meadow, he had fallen and been run over.
Sad stuff but that's reality. So if you are out in some desolate spot and feel the hair on the back of your neck stand up....who knows? Might be one of those guys giving you a freindly "hello".
BR&P wrote:BR&P/B&O was like any other railroad, it had its share of fatalities and incidents. I actually am working (sporadically) on a list of BR&P employee fatalities. Some of them are strange by today's standards - boiler explosions, falling off the top of a boxcar - and others are things that still kill people today - walking between cars just as they begin moving, getting off a train and being struck by movement on an adjacent track.The Beaver Meadow that you mentioned, is that near Bird on the Rochester branch or is that where Beaver siding was?
During the 40's a B&O dispatcher passed away right at the desk. in 1897 there was a head-on between Leroy and DL&W Jct involving a snowplow, conductor & brakeman killed. If you work the road job, take a moment next time you round Gayton's Curve, take your hat off for Louis Franks, a fireman killed in a wreck there. How about Train 28 taking the siding at Lime Rock and they can't find brakeman Harry Munger? Went to P&L and made a report, took the train to Garbutt and then took the engine back to look for him. They found him at Beaver Meadow, he had fallen and been run over.
Sad stuff but that's reality. So if you are out in some desolate spot and feel the hair on the back of your neck stand up....who knows? Might be one of those guys giving you a freindly "hello".
HexOmega2319 wrote:Not sure if you meant facilities or fatalities. But here is one of the latter.
Very interesting that you mention that.. I've always been creeped out walking class 1 brake tests along that stretch of track at night and the other R&S guys would often tell stories of seeing things and hearing things. Brooks Avenue's yard office and Lincoln Park are especially creepy. Do you have any other excerpts about facilities on the BR&P/B&O in the Rochester area?