Big Bend Railroad History: June 2012

Thursday, June 21, 2012

1976 Milwaukee Road Wreck

Photos courtesy of Harley Kuehl.

As I promised, here's those pics of that MILW washout/derailment that occurred west of Othello WA. I'm certained it happened the summer of '76 or '77. Train was westbound, and as this was before the railroad plummeted into 10 mph track, I think timetable speed was 50mph; regardless, they had enuff momentum to continue thru the remainder of the cut to the next fill where the lead unit spilled down the hillside. This first pic is taken from one of the gons on the work train looking east. Our tie gang was called in from Plummer ID to help build the shoehorn track around the units.

This 2nd pic shows the crew skeletonizing the track to be pulled over onto the new fill for the shoehorn...the ties that had been tossed against the fuel tanks would be used in that shoehorn (panel tracks were not the norm yet).

This next pic is where the train buckled and derailed about ten cars behind the power; light TT flats, spilling their containers down the fill east of the washout in the cut.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Purdy Scrapyard Cabeese

Countless cars were scrapped by the Purdy Co. at their Ephrata, WA location. Mr. Strodtz is the only person I've found, so far, that stopped by for photos.

This red one is the BN 11006, as seen above. It now rests near Park Lake in poor condition. It sat for years in green paint with its BN markings. Someone tried to fix it up, but never finished.

Many other cabeese in the area came from this scrapping operation.

See more about the Purdy operation in Ephrata.

Scrapyard photos taken by Russ Strodtz. Used with permission.