Derailment and a Connection to My Circus Pony Lovin' Grandfather

Yesterday afternoon a freight train going over the downtown bridge from West Lafayette to Lafayette derailed and three cars fell off and into the Wabash River. (All derailment photos from Dave Bangert.)

The cars were carrying scrap metal so fortunately there were no people or hazardous materials aboard.

The weight of the cars was so great that the derailment literally twisted and pulled the tracks off the bridge.

Cranes are going to be needed to lift the cars and tracks up, and then there will have to be a clean up to get the scrap metal out of the river.

Train traffic will need to be rerouted for a long time and I would not be surprised if they decide to replace the bridge - it's well over 100 years old.

As I looked at the damage, I thought about my Grandpa Martin, the one who bought circus pony O'Boy for my father. He was a railroad conductor and once had a terrible accident on one of the bridges over the Mississippi River in St. Louis. 

A new engineer misread his lantern signals and started the train. My grandfather ran to catch up, grabbed the railing to the caboose stairs, and tried to swing aboard. Grandpa slipped and fell, got caught on something, and ended up being dragged by the train all the way across the bridge. Needless to say, he was badly injured. 

I got chills as I looked at those pictures of the train derailment yesterday. Our bridge is a lot less high and much shorter than the one Grandpa was dragged over. What a terrifying ordeal that must've been!

One of Grandpa's conductor's lanterns that is kept on a table in my living room.

I love trains and have taken Amtrak cross country many times to visit our kids in Colorado and Utah. I've crossed many rivers (including the Mississippi) on bridges just like the one here over the Wabash that are high and have no railings. 

Having this derailment in my hometown is a sobering reminder that accidents happen.

All Aboard the Breyer Train!

Did you know that Breyer dabbled in the model railroad hobby and made a cattle car for Lionel in 1996? I didn't. 

But I found one and bought it to add to my collection. 

Lionel seems to have its own model railroad scale - this is (I think) their 1:24 g-gauge train. 

The blue sign on the right says "Stablemate" but Stablemates are 1:32 scale, so I need to do more research before I can say for sure just what the scale of this car is.

The model horses' heads inside move in and out of the windows as the cattle car moves. 

My family has a history with trains, both real and model, and I still have a few pieces from my childhood train set. They are a lot smaller than the Lionel Breyer cattle car.

My Grandpa Martin was a railroad conductor for the railways between St. Louis, Effingham, and Indianapolis from the 1920s through the 1960s.

I have two of his old railroad lanterns. Train engineers depended on the conductor to let them know when the train was ready to start moving and this was done by the conductor waving the lantern a few times from the caboose. 

One night while in St. Louis and preparing to head east across the Mississippi over the Merchant's Bridge,  there was a miscommunication between my grandfather and the engineer up at the front of the train. The train began its journey but my grandfather was not yet aboard.

According to family lore, my grandfather grabbed the caboose's railing as it passed him, attempting to swing up and onto the steps of the car. But he slipped and fell, and then while still holding onto the railing for dear life, was dragged all the way across the bridge and the Mississippi River. Grandpa was terrified to let go because the spaces between the railroad ties were wide enough for him to fall through, plunge into the river, and drown.

My grandfather carving the Thanksgiving turkey in the 1940s.

The engineer knew there was a problem but was afraid to stop the train for the same reason - he didn't want my grandfather to slip off the tracks and into the water if they stopped over the river. So, he kept the train moving until the caboose was off the bridge and they could get my grandfather help. 

Here's another of my grandfather's lanterns. I don't know a lot about this one but we have been told by a railroad memorabilia collector that it is very unusual. (It's kind of ugly, too, haha!)

I am not sure if I am going to display the Breyer cattle car with my other model trains or if I will put it back in its box for safekeeping. Regardless, it was fun to find one, and I've been thinking of my grandfather ever since!

Christmas Card of the Day