BLMR Doomed1

A day of railfanning on the Blue Mountain Railroad became a little more interesting than expected. This is a 4-part series shot while following a train from Walla Walla to Wallula on April 13, 1997.

Part 1 is switching in the Walla Walla yard, includes hooking onto a car spotted on a siding with 1890-vintage 55 lbs rail. Things get off to a rocky start a little later when a rail breaks, derailing two cars. They are spotted out, and the resulting train has two empties at the front end with the rest of the train being fully loaded.

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• BLMR
• derail
• Blue
• mountain
• Railroad
• Walla
• wallula
• track

[Subaruguy8508]

Two empties on the head end with a bunch of loads behind and then braking on a curve yet.....its no wonder he derailed. Did they say if the rail rolled over or was it from speed? Many times braking and pulling to hard can result in that type of an incident if the railbed is weak.

[VMac822]

@Subaruguy8508

It happened on a curve going down grade and the empty lumber flatbed (3rd car) leading truck jumped the track (wasn't a track problem). But the engineer didn't notice and kept on rolling another 9/10ths of a mile before that car damaged the track resulting in a pileup. The engineer had to be pretty remiss to not notice he was dragging a derailed car. Incidentally the same engineer had a derailment on that same curve just a few months prior, derailing several cars.

[65crewcabpw]

LOL, the railroad runs right over by my home, I live in Weston. The rails between Walla Walla and Weston are HORRIBLE. Some of them have over an inch worn off the top of the rail itself. The route up Dry Creek Canyon was actually a very heavily travelled interconnect for three different railroads 50 years ago. They met in Centerville (Now Athena), and there was a switching area for the various railroads to exchange cars there.

[VMac822]

I knew the line went clear to Pendleton but didn't know 3 lines used it. When they abandoned the Weston line I thought it was over, it was a real surprise when they started using it again.

[Barricade360]

it sucks 784 is the only remaining blue mountain railroad locomotive currently painted in BVRR paint

[65crewcabpw]

Actually, the three met in the city limits of what is now Athena. There's nothing there of it now, but I can show you where the grades used to run. Very old maps, from the 50's to 70's will show you the routes of the old rail grades, and they'll have the rail line's name on them.

[steeps24]

Typical Walla Walla technical difficulties.

[trangerstx]

Wooden Axle!

[mafarnz]

Running covered hoppers on anything smaller than 100 lb rail is bad news. That track is in rough shape.