Bad Day for No. 86 at Ironto (1966)

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 Several pages from an old time book.  The date was May 7, 1966.

Train No. 86, called Bluefield 10:00AM.   Inbound 86 arrived 10:24 am.
Rear end fill-out of coal added to rear end 10:48, pulled 10:56am.
Received train on Westbound Main Line above RD.  Departed Blfd 10:56am with
Engs 719-663-718-330-378, 122 loads, 11 empties.  My time book shows 8,144
tons for the train , but that is very light for a train of this size.  It
is likely that the "8,144 ton" figure was the tonnage of the train when it
arrived at Bluefield, before the rear end coal fill-out was added on.
12,500 tons would be a more believable figure.  My time book contains no
note on the exact number of loads of coal added to the rear end, but I
recall it was about 40 cars.

Conductor W.F. Aliff, Flagman Oscar Neal, Head End Brakeman A.D. Burnett,
Engineman Bill Blakely, Fireman none.  Caboose 518451, weather 80 deg clear.

Met  Short Run at Kellysville Connection switch 11:40am.  5 mins delay acct
20 MPH slow order east of Pembroke.

Whitethorne 11:54am - 1:07pm, getting Pusher engine 836-380-676, Engineman
Mowles.  By Whitethorne 1:32pm.  15 mins delay running out 20 MPH slow
order Ellett to west end Fagg siding.

2:01 pm in emergency about 2 miles east of Ironto, and about 3 miles west
of Kumis, while running 42 mph.  Found break-in-two between 13th car  N&W
56620 and 14th car DT&I 19663 with 100% new break on knuckle in east end of
DT&I car.  Found 56th through 97th car wrecked, which included 3
refrigerators loaded beer, 3 auto racks, several cars grain, other cars of
sawdust, lettuce and a tank car of ether.  Lettuce and sawdust were
floating in the river, and kegs of beer were dropping out of one
refrigerator car.  500 feet track completely torn up, all pole line down.
Estimated 3 days to open line.  Wreck trains ordered from Roanoke and
Bluefield.

Departed wreck site 3:43 pm with head 13 cars and Flagman on engine.
 Kumis siding 3:56 pm to 4:00 pm, meet Wreck Extra West.

Stopped Riverside to pick up Conductor (who had been brought ahead by motor
vehicle,)  4:06 pm - 4:07 pm.

Yard Board (North) Roanoke 4:30PM, Stopped 4:55 pm, relieved 4:55 pm.

Rear end of train pulled back by Whitethorne Pusher and taken to Celco.
All trains operated via Christiansburg with two Pusher crews at Walton.

The above are the scientific details.  Below are some of the human
details...

When I walked back from the head end, I found a break-in-two between the
13th and 14th car, separated by a gap of about 200 feet.   The east knuckle
of the 14th car was broken with a 100% new break.  Continuing back, I found
the 41st car, a yellow mechanical refrigerator, exactly crosswise across
the track, de-trucked.  I climbed up on the roof, and all I could see to
the west was piled up cars.

In a few minutes, I observed Conductor "Bud" Aliff and Flagman Oscar Neal
on the opposite side of the Roanoke River.  They had waded across the
river.  Bud Aliff told me they had sat in the cupola and watched the wreck
occur, wondering if the train would stop before the wreck "got to" the
caboose.  They were prepared to jump, if necessary. 35 cars and the caboose
remained upright after the train finally stopped.

Bud Aliff was a 1926 hire who had often "broke" for my Grandfather.
("Broke" = proper railroad vocabulary Past Tense of the verb "to brake,"
which is what a Brakeman does; he "brakes" today, but yesterday he
"broke.")  I always enjoyed working for Bud as he was a first class person
and sometimes told me things about my Grandfather.  Bud had a younger
brother, Tom, a 1939 hire, who was in passenger service on the Bristol Line
at the time,  Their father had been Mike Aliff, an old time Radford
Division trainman who hired somewhere around 1905, and who, as I recall,
never "took promotion."

I believe it was Bud Aliff who had not long before received a 30 day
suspension for an incident that happened with Train No. 17 on the Bristol
Line.  Somewhere west of Pulaski (it might have been on the Peak Creek
Mountain Grade,) one set of wheels on a baggage car derailed and the train
proceeded somewhere around 6 miles before it was discovered, "shearing off
all the track bolts on one side," as it was said.  The Conductor (whom I
recall was Bud,) received 30 days for not discovering the derailed pair of
wheels on his moving train.  I guess "the Comp'ny" expected him to be out
on the back platform of the rear car, looking at the track with his lantern
in the darkness, checking for chewed-up ties.  (Take the word of a guy who
has made such observations hundreds of times... you cannot really see
anything wrong with the track when running at speed in the darkness, even
if you are looking for it.)  Mr. Tommy Duncan was working the Bristol Line
at this time and may remember the details.

I never heard what "official cause" the railroad put on the wreck of No. 86
east of Ironto.   At the time of the wreck, the train had been bunched with
the dynamic brake all the way since coming out of Merrimac Tunnel with the
dynamic brake supplemented by two or three automatic brake applications, as
required.  At the time of the wreck, the automatic brake was not applied
and the train was being held back by the dynamic brake alone.  The train
was just coming off an 0.73% descending grade, onto a relatively flat
portion of railroad.  The broken knuckle with the 100% new break  on the
14th head car indicates that an emergency brake application had occurred on
the rear end of the train, and when the rear end made a sudden decrease in
speed, the head end "ran away" from the rear end, due to momentum, and the
broken knuckle was the weak link in the chain.  The reason the rear end
went in emergency and "sat down" was probably never determined.  That could
have been occasioned by a burst air hose, the derailment of a car, a
carrier iron breaking and dropping a drawhead down on the ties, or other
reasons.  "Derailment Committees" never go back to the V.P. with a "we
don't know" answer, so they probably made up something.  (Again, take it
from a guy who has served on "derailment committees.")  But I believe they
stopped adding rear-end coal tonnage fill-outs to eastward  Time Freights
for a season thereafter, so all the heavy weight on the rear end of the
train was most likely suspected as somehow contributing.  Engineman Blakely
continued in service, so was not implicated.

This wreck occurred somewhere around MP V-266.  Back in those days, no one
talked in terms of Mile Posts except M-W people and those who issued Train
Orders.  Train and Engine crews expressed location as so-many-miles east or
west of a station, a siding switch or other obvious location.  Times have
changed.

Attached is a photograph taken from an airplane by John Cook, a
photographers for the Roanoke Times and World News, not long before dark
that evening.  John's father, Ernest, was a Norfolk Division Conductor.
John gave me the negatives about a week after the wreck.  In the photo, the
wreck derrick at right is the Roanoke Wreck Train, and the boom faces
westward in this photo.  One of the wrecked 89 foot flats was placed across
the river as a bridge during the clean-up after the wreck, and the
satellite imagery shows it is still there.  (The flat car is 2500 feet east
of Falls Road/Va. Rt. 603 U.G. Bridge, and 580 feet east of the present
Bradshaw Garbage Dump Branch switch.)

One more aside:  Ernest Cook was the Brakeman on the last run of Nos. 11-12
from Roanoke to Winston and return.  He was borrowed off the Norfolk
Division because he had a passenger uniform and the Punkin' Vine was out of
passenger men.  Ernest Cook saw me with a Shenandoah Division Time Table
and asked if he could borrow it for the trip, as he had none.  The
Conductor on that last run was "Barnyard" Davis.  Some day I will post the
few photos I have of the last run of Nos. 11-12.

-- abram burnett

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