Taking inspiration from 2 older forums about preserved locomotives that were in all forms of accidents/incidents during their revenue service. What preserved vintage railcars were in accidents/incidents during their revenue career? This can range from derailments to bridge collapses

Links to older forums:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=32608

http://www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6788

All of our Washington, DC streetcars have evidence of accident repairs from revenue service days.

Seaboard Air Line coach observation #6400 was badly damaged during WWII (the story, taken from its gofundme page, is below). Unfortunately I found out today, as part of looking into what progress has been made, that John Owen, who was largely responsible for saving this car (that had been made into a diner in Charlestown, Indiana, that closed, and the city wanted it out) passed away a year ago at 62. An unheralded preservationist, he also was responsible for getting two cars out of ITM (an ex-PRR lightweight sleeper and an ex-W&LE wood executive car) until other groups were able to take them. All three cars would likely no longer exist if not for him. RIP.

"John Owen is organizing this fundraiser.
Help save Seaboard Airline Coach Observation from the cutting torch. Constructed by the Budd Company in 1938.

She appeared at the 1939 New York Worlds Fair as a part of the train of tomorrow. Departing the fair for Miami 2-2-1939 with much fanfare as the last car of the seven car Silver Meteor on its first run between New York and Miami.
Welcomed by a crowd of over 2000 people in Miami The Silver Meteor set the pace for modern train travel in the south. When the United States went to war in 1941 the Silver Meteor and the Seaboard Airline Railroad did too. Departing New York on June 14th 1942 the Silver Meteor with 17 cars and 514 passengers begin her fateful trip south running over an hour late she stopped at the tiny town of Kittrell North Carolina to receive orders her brakes locked. A south bound freight following behind her running in the fog not knowing the Meteor had stopped rear ended the Meteor. Car 6400 suffered the force of the damage. Four passengers were killed instantly including three US Army personal returning to Camp Blanding in Starke Fla when the boiler pipes ripped open on the steam engine upon impact a total of eight were killed and eleven injured all passengers in coach 6400. The trainmaster of this section of the railroad committed suicide upon hearing of the disaster which estimated many more dead outside his office in the Raleigh yard This was the second railroad fatality of World War Two which killed servicemen. Car 6400 the oldest survivor of such an accident.
Rebuilt and returned to service in 1943 this coach continued to move passengers until its retirement for passenger service in 1971 upon arrival of Amtrak. In 1972 she was converted to an instructional car by the Seaboard Coast Line and served in that role into the 1990's for CSX."

The caption for the below photo: "Louisville Railway Company Inc
November 21, 2021
Good news Seaboard 6400 now has a working airbrake system windows are getting reinstalled soon." I don't know what happened to the car after John Owen passed.

The Nebraska Zephyr articulated trainset at Illinois Railway Museum made an unscheduled stop in the Downers Grove IL station around 1948 or so. Not "at" the station -- "in" the station. The train hit a pipe on the track that had come off a freight train and derailed into the station. I believe there were some fatalities, but I don't have the details. The locomotive now on the train wasn't the loco on the train at the time. The train was repaired, and there's evidence of the repairs in at least one of the cars.

More information on the Downers Grove IL accident with what's now the IRM Nebraska Zephyr trainset. The accident occurred on April 3, 1947 and was caused by a tractor that fell off a freight train (not a pipe). There were three fatalities. The trainset, at the time, was operating as the "Twin Cities Zephyr". It became the "Nebraska Zephyr" later, when replaced by newer equipment on the Twin Cities run.

Is there a streetcar or interurban care in our collections that hasn't been in an accident, often a serious one? The front ends of wooden streetcars have been rebuilt time after time. The hard part is when those accidents were on our watch.

Check out this...
http://www.sarmrail.org/equipment/l2q7e ... 2qd2yi5ei2

Southern dining car 3164 was knocked into the station at Knoxville, Tennessee, and was actually inside several offices. When restored, the damage on the end could be found. The station also has different brick where the car made a hole in the wall.

Bart

On the D&RGW narrow gauge, now-out-of-service #483 was involved in a turn-over derailment that killed the fireman in Sept. 1958.

489 derailed and turned over running light down Cumbres Pass in April, 1926, killing the engineer. 489 was less than 6 months old!

At the Colorado RR Museum #346 derailed while under lease to the Colorado & Southern on Kenosha Pass in the 1930's killing the engineer.

Salt Lake & Utah #751, an interurban observation car which is now located at the Western Railway Museum, was once involved in a collision with an oncoming D&RGW train while trying to race across the diamond in downtown Provo, UT, on Oct. 4, 1918. Luckily, no one was killed.

An account of the incident from that time can be found here:
https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87 ... 2fnr/46839

As it looks today:
https://www.wrm.org/visit/car-roster/pa ... d-utah-751

Some additional photos (though ignore the ignorant writing):
https://provocationutah.wordpress.com/2 ... c-transit/

(Personally, I was surprised to find that one of the passengers mentioned in the news article was actually a great-something-uncle of mine)

Thanks for posting these photo links! I've been wanting a copy of the rooftop photo for decades. The story I was told was that the interurban was heading west on Center Street and the steam train was going south on 2nd west, coming from Heber City. The Heber local waited for the interurban to pass, and as the 2nd car was passing, the engineer on the blind side of his 2-8-0 opened up, except that the interurban had three cars on it that day instead of the usual two. Oops!

This is the first time I have seen a photo from the front of the car. It looks like the SL&U must have replaced the side sheets, window posts, and probably the side sill for about half the length of the car. The letter board still has damage to it. The work was done very well, other than the letter board you would not know the car was in an accident. This photo also illustrates very well why all that annealed window glass has to be replaced with something safer. WRM uses tempered glass on side windows and laminated lites on all end facing windows. Always the thickest glass the sash will take. The exception to this is clerestory windows, which may remain as annealed glass. This is consistent with the California PUC General Orders.

SAL 6400 is one of three Budd chair-lounge-obs car built in February, 1939, for the Silver Meteor. (6400-6402) It was built as a round-end car but received a flat end in the 1943 rebuild. These cars were supplememted by three flat-end chair-buffet-obs cars 6500-6502 in 1940 for NY-St. Pete service. It took three consists to protect a NY-Miami/St. Pete daily schedule.

The 1939-1940 NY World's Fair featured "Railroads on Parade," advertising new passenger cars of the day. The Meteor would have been one of the easiest trains to display between trips, but I still don't think there was enough time.

Postwar, the Train of Tomorrow was four Pullman-Standard dome cars built for GM in 1947. The train went to UP in 1950.

Finally did you notice 6400 still had its prewar leaf spring trucks after 32 years of service?

Phil Mulligan

Northern Texas Traction interurban No. 25 was involved in a grade crossing accident that killed prominent Fort Worth businessman, Paul Waples. When we were restoring the car, we found evidence of a repair under the siding that was signed and dated by the shop crew. Not sure if the date coincided with the accident, but it's possible.




No. 25 is on display at Trinity Metro's Central Station in Fort Worth, Texas.

London and Port Stanley interurban #8 was built by Jewett in 1915 in Newark, Ohio. She caught fire on January 4th 1926 and was completely gutted. She was rebuilt by the Canada Car and Foundry company and continued to serve for another 30 years. She now resides at the Halton County Radial Railway museum near Rockwood Ontario.
https://hcry.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/1920.png

Circa 1995: Queen Anne's RR (Lewes, DE) ex-PRR MP54 coach.
Leased for a week to Maryland & Delaware RR for their excursions, it was jammed between two sections of loaded coal trains in the Conrail interchange yard. Conrail did not accept any responsibility for their actions. Repaired by QARR and returned to service, but now scrapped.