It's an engineers typical anxiety dream.....not tying down the engine and it rolling away then waking up in a panic.

The other favorite of mine, being you set the air and nothing happens, and you go OH SH@T........and wake up in a panic....that one really happened to me once.... You don't go OH SH@T, instead your butt just involuntarily grabs the seat by its own lips as it puckers..... Got out of that one, but that's a whole other story......

So prevalent is this fear of not tying down the engine, that Pat McDowell the senior lost his legs, that way. When having just tied the engine up and walking to the shanty, the engine starts moving, and the story is he went to catch the "runaway" that he somehow slipped and was run over (Anaheim engine spur, always wet and greasy, IIRC)......

Actually, he was a having a WTF moment, that split second thought where we go WTF, but still have to react, and do something. Because he had indeed tied it down for the next crew, and while he was walking away, they'd got on, released the handbrake, and started moving the engine without ringing he bell, as required.

Proper use of the bell would have signaled that someone was actually operating the engine and that it had not "runaway".

SAFETY IS OF THE FIRST IMPORTANCE, OBEDIENCE TOO THE RULES IS REQUIRED.....

And, sometimes, unfortunately, even what some consider to be the "dumb" rules are literally written in blood.

The best runaway of my time where the helpers that crashed at Rimlon(?), fireman didn't tie the handbrake on the units or set chains to block the wheels, or set the derail(??), and they rolled out of the helper spur, at the Dinosaur, when they were at beans, all of the way down Beaumont in the path of the oncoming Sunset (IIRC, or that is the legend?). The "crater" those geeps made in the sand where they came flying off at over 100 mph. and buried themselves, after the dispatcher intentionally lined them in, was still there years later.

And, my other favorite was the lumber car that got loose some where above Glendale, that the herder calmly lined off of the mainline, into a cut of empties on the long side of the upper A yard.......violent, messy, expensive, but at least nobody was hurt......

My best catching a runaway story goes to Carl "blow da whistle" Ragoza, when working down on the south PE branches, at a pretty high speed, on some pretty dubious track......