The YouTube post goes back aways. The day I shot that video was a wild one. My wife and I (plus my in-laws) were taking a roundabout trip from Santa Cruz, CA to Cozad, Nebraska for my mother-in-law's 50th high school reunion in Cozad. While my in-laws were at the reunion festivities, my wife Marjorie and I went trackside a little before sunset. The very first UP train we photographed was this UP local.

We laughed at the sick sounding horn of this w/b as it approached the grade crossing. Shortly after the last horn note played, the dynamic brakes blew sky high. As first I throught it was the turbo, but as soon as we saw sparks and molten wiring hitting the walkway, we knew different.

It you look closely you can see chunks of metal flying everywhere. It would have killed or seriously injured anyone standing the blast zone.

As the train slowed down I said that someone will probably be calling the fire department. We drove into downtown Cozad and were surprised to see the crew switching a local customer as if nothing had happened. I filmed them switching as I expected to see the fire department arrive, but they didn't. Over the scanner we listened to the crew talking to the UP dispatcher. They said their power was still operable and they could finish their run. The dispatcher sounded like he wasn't all that convinced, but he relented and let the local depart as a very fast e/b was approaching on the e/b main.

We watched the two trains disappear before we went back to our previous railfan location. It wasn't long after that that we heard the local's crew informating the UP dispatcher that their locomotive took a dump, and the other unit wasn't loading properly. The dispatcher was not pleased that now he was down to one mainline. We filmed six more trains before darkness forced us to quit. We even looked for the large piece of the dynamic brake that few high into the air. We never found it.

As a side note, the next day my father-in-law and I went trackside. UP was running trains like streetcars. Around 9:00 P.M. we began to see lightning to the west. Being that it was warm and there was still some light left to videotape, we stayed put for another 15 minutes or so. Suddenly, the wind picked up. It was stong enough that I had to hold my tripod from tipping over. We packed up and headed to the post office to drop of some slide film in pre-paid mailers. Then it began to rain very, very hard, like it did when I was stationed in Guam in 1963.

When we arrived at our motel rooms, my wife had this big sigh of relief on her face. She said a tornado warning for the Cozad area had been issued on television. We learned the next morning that the tornado touched down about 3 miles from where were were watching trains the night before. Of course, it was too dark for us to notice anything other than it was very windy and it rained hard. This all occurred June 25-26, 1991.

Tony J.



OPRRMS Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Kevin Dunwoody Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> > I don't understand, being that I an only a
> foamer
> > and not an employee - Does the prime mover only
> > explode out of one side of the locomotive? -
> and
> > - Is it the responsibility of the train crew
> to
> > position the power? I have seen picture posts
> (of
> > BNSF trains in Cajon Pass) on this board with
> > responses from the folks in Barstow about how
> they
> > put "that" Locomotive lash up together. Or is
> it
> > true that Severe Duty does in fact need a long
> > vacation or a career change.
>
> You might be surprised by what a locomotive can
> expectorate. Take a look at this Tony J. video
> showing what can happen when a dynamic brake
> assembly disintegrates under load:
> [www.youtube.com]. Not
> sure I'd want to be anywhere near it when it let
> loose. Tony posts here, so maybe he'll chime in
> when he see this.
>
> A similar incident happened on Beaumont Pass a few
> years ago, resulting in a fatality to a motorist
> driving on San Timoteo Canyon Road.