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  • us army railroaders in iran during ww2

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A general discussion about shortlines, industrials, and military railroads

Moderator: Aa3rt

 #1381143  by Jeff Smith
 
I'm going to move/cross-post this to Short Lines and Industrial/Military for a little more visibility, and it may fit there better. I'll leave a shadow here in Worldwide. In the meanwhile, here's a quote from the article, and thank you for posting this fascinating piece of history!
ON A CHILLY AFTERNOON in late 1943, a U.S. Army train was chugging north between Arak and Qom, Iran. The trip had departed Khorramshahr, on the Persian Gulf. At Tehran, Red Army railroaders would take over, shepherding train and cargo into the U.S.S.R. to supply the fight against the Germans. For the delivery crew—an engineman, a fireman, and a conductor, all GIs, plus an Iranian brakeman—operations like this usually were milk runs.

But not today.

Today’s 1,000-ton load was 10 tankers of volatile aviation fuel, plus 11 boxcars packed with ammunition and high explosive. And the big steam locomotive’s throttle was jammed wide open.

The train had just summited the towering Zagros Mountains at a point nearly 200 miles north of the Gulf when the throttle valve sheared. The locomotive’s power plant was revving at peak output as the train started a 2,500-foot descent that would last 42 miles—if it stayed on the tracks. Engineman Virgil E. Oakes hit the air brakes, but only four cars had them; of the rest, few had working brakes. Oakes tried reversing the drivers. No go. The train obeyed the laws of physics, quickly accelerating to 65 miles an hour. Like the rest of the crew, the fireman—Corporal Harry Slick, 23, a Pennsylvanian with a passing resemblance to actor Robert Taylor—was clinging for dear life.
 #1381338  by philipmartin
 
That's certaily a good railroad story. To bad the engineer who joined the birds broke his head. I guess he didn't want to be around a crackup of all the aviation gas cars and munition cars. Too bad there were only four cars with power brakes on a train like that.
Here's a link to a Wiki article "Trans-Iranian Railway." The section on Engineering and geological challenges describes unusual conditions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Iranian_Railway" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

Top photo: picturesque railway bridge at Do Ab, Mazanderan Province on the Gorgan — Bandar Shah line.
Middle: 1000 hp Alco GE road switcher pulling a train of tank cars. Not the world's most powerful locomotive.
Bottom: supposedly an American locomotive with its number written on the smokebox in chalk or paint.
 #1382085  by DutchRailnut
 
it seems weird the original article is saying Iran as it did not exist till early 1980's, the country was known as Persia
 #1382106  by philipmartin
 
philipmartin wrote:
David Benton wrote:I wonder why no one thought to put it in reverse at the beginning?
Throttle stuck open? Why not drop the fire? (Although putting that fire under the cars of aviation fuel and munitions might have been problematic.)
 #1382243  by Rbts Stn
 
DutchRailnut wrote:it seems weird the original article is saying Iran as it did not exist till early 1980's, the country was known as Persia
Pretty sure it's been Iran a whole lot longer than the 1980s, Heck the hostage crisis started in 1979 and it was definitely Iran then. Check to see when the Shah took power, I think he changed the name