Salamanca derailment - 4/26

Anyone know anything about the derailment in Salamanca? I heard 4 car on the ground from 524? 525 ran through to Buffalo on 4/26. I heard Hulcher was there to clean up the mess. Maybe a bad bearing(rumor has it)? Did they clean up the derailment at Port Allegany(Pitt Corning) also? A 532 is gonna be ordered outta Conway enroute to Meadville so I'm assuming they have one of the tracks clear to run again.....any details?

Assuming that things are the way they were, the passing siding in Salamanca isn't open, so there's no place for the 532 to go.

Dave Becker

I could be wrong, but there did not appear to be any crews on duty or any activity in meadville yard this morning - so maybe something is up. There should have been a MEHN crew on duty (although they would have been taxi from the hotel) and a local crew on duty and there were no cars by the office

The derailment was in Olean, not Salamanca. Right at the West end of the yard.

The derailment was at the new switch that was built a year ago just east of Wildwood Avenue in Salamanca. A journal bearing on one of the cars burned off about two miles before reaching the switch, damaging ties on the main track through the city. Most likely the derailed cars were moved to Olean for inspection and repair.

SO which is it.. One says it was salamanca, one says it was olean, both give locations. which is correct?

My source came from within the WNY&P, thus I found it quite credible - however, I have not been down there myself to see the aftermath, so I cannot be 100% sure.

I read somewhere a couple of years ago that WNYP planned to install 6 hotbox detectors between Meadville and Hornell. They had put in two of them by last summer, one at Union City or Corry (not sure which) and one at Wellsville. Why did they stop? Do they intend to put in the rest? A couple more detectors at maybe falconer and Salamanca would have caught this wreck before it happened.

I understand it was at the location AY, which is the West end of the yard in Olean. That's also quite near the Dispatch office now, so that must have been less than amusing to see happen out the window.

Having said that, it is quite possible that you could have had a hotbox detector a few miles from this and it would not have caught it. I don't know specifics or anything like that, but to suggest that a couple more detectors could have prevented this is pretty premature, and isn't a foregone conclusion.

Dave Becker

A hot journal can develop rather quickly - in under 10 miles, a journal can go from being perfectly fine to being so hot that it burns right off - there have been numerous incidents like this where a detector a mere 5-10 miles earlier read "No Defects". If you see a glowing red journal or something of the sort, call it in ASAP.

WNYP did purchase a half-dozen used HBD about three years ago. The deal was too good to be true and the detectors had tons of parts missing and it was determined that the previous ownership was in question. Of the six, I believe only one was anywhere near complete and that is probably the one that ended up in Union City. Another one needed more material which may be the one at Wellsville. The other four were more or less "parts donors" or "parts supplies".

Probably additional detectors will be in the capital projects of the future, but I have nothing official on that.

SMT

The 4/30 Salamanca Press has an eyewitness account and a photo of the wrecked cars in the cut behind the Wildwood Cemetery where the new switch was built last summer.

Over on railfan.net, "salchief" reports that the hot bearing set small fires between Steamburg and Salamanca. The bearing burned off completely near the west end of the Salamanca siding (WC). If WNYP had planned to install 4 more detectors, they would have been more or less evenly spaced if located at something like Columbus, Falconer, Salamanca and Olean. It's not very credible to insist that this car with the hot bearing would not have tripped a detector at Falconer or WC.

The derailment was in the afternoon of Saturday the 25th, by the way.

I can't think of any regular freight line that has detectors 5 miles apart. On the former Conrail lines like the Southern Tier or the Buffalo Line, how far apart are the detectors?

The dectors on the Buffalo Line were roughly 10 miles apart, although all are not hot box detectors. Locally, at MP 117, there is a hot box/dragging equipment/hot wheel detector, while the one was at MP 126 was a just a dragging equipment detector. It seems to have been out of order for the past year or more, as I have not heard it on the scanner for a very long time.

I found out last night that the hotbox detectors that were put in at Union City and Wellsville were new equipment. The company negotiated attractive prices and wanted something they could get parts and service for. There were supposed to be six installations using this equipment.