Separation of the train does sometimes happen in freight service. While working a short stint on the C.& N. W. in the 60's I was head brakeman on the Waukegan (Illinois) local. With about 20 cars and doing around 60 mph south of Waukegan we broke apart twice when the pin lifted on the same car. We had a single GP-7 and the head end stopped in emergency about a block and a half farther down the line than the rear end, which probably had more empties...don't recall, as it's been awhile, to say the least. No damage, no derailing...just a couple of surprise stops.

But I think my most memorable Amtrak trip (I guess the worst) was on the Coast Starlight maybe five years ago or so. While stopped S/B in Santa Barbara, blocking a street crossing, both our units died while idling and the crew could not get them started again. The conductor knew from our previous conversation that I'd once worked on the railorad and to my great surprise asked if I knew anything about the locomotive's computers and how to reboot them so the units could be re-started. Of course I didn't have a clue.

The situation was resolved by moving all the Starlight passengers and personal baggage to the LA train sitting on the adjacent siding (I'm not sure what they were called then but I think it was right near when the first scheduled round trips LA-Santa Barbara had begun). We had been due into LAUPT about 2100 and finally arrived about midnight. My wife and I got four hours sleep in a downtown hotel before we had to get up to catch a San Diego train in the morning.

We heard later that a mechanic from SLO had finally gotten down to Santa Barbara and restarted the two Starlight units and that they got into LA only about a half-hour behind our local.