A Day in the Life: The Railroad

Option Five: Derailment in Omaha, Nebraska


Train 81 left Silvis, Illinois and reached Des Moines, Iowa the night before.  The crew spent the night and prepared a return route the following day.

The head brakeman would go to the roundhouse if he had to get engines.  He would go with the firemen and they'd bring the engines out and put them on the train. The rear brakeman will go down and walk the track, and he would check and make sure all the brake riggings were in good shape. He'd double check the carman's work. He'd make sure that the retainer valves…out west you use a retainer valve when you're coming down the mountain. They'll set up a quarter, half or three quarters or full to keep the brakes partially set as they go down the hills. When you get to the bottom you release your retainers. Once in a while they forget to release a retainer. So you would check all your retainer valves because you did not want the wheels getting hot going across the flat track.

Because when I was working in Silvis, Illinois to Des Moines, Iowa, it's running across the top of the table. It's flat as can be. So, anyway, you did that [checked the retainers], got back on the caboose, make sure you had all your supplies. Make sure that the markers had oil in them so they'd light, because they weren't electric when I first started. They were kerosene lit.  The one thing a brakeman did not do was light the conductor's lamp on his desk. That was the conductor's lamp and he was the only one that adjusted the wick, trimmed the wick, or lit the lamp. You did not touch the conductor's lamp unless you were the conductor on that thing. Every conductor had their way they wanted their lamp lit. It would sit over his desk.  [listen to audio clip here 27:40]

5:30 a.m. the following day

You’d come into Marengo, Iowa at a 60mph curve. They'd [the wheels] throw fire up and up and over the right of way fence. They'd set cornfields on fire and everything else because it’s steel and against steel, and they’d slow down, but by the time that rear end cleared that curve, they were back at 90 miles an hour and they're gone again.   [listen to audio clip here 49:59]

9:00 a.m. train enters Omaha, Nebraska

I’ve been in more than one derailment, (chuckles) as a brakeman, a conductor, and an engineer!  The biggest one I ever had as an engineer, I was leaving Omaha, Nebraska going the back way down to Kansas City.  You go out of Kansas City and all the way up to the top of the hill, and you could go to Lincoln, or you could go to Omaha. All we did was run grain trains from Omaha to Lincoln to Kansas City.  It was all loaded grain cars.  They were coming out of Omaha with a grain train. We’d take ‘em down and change crews at Kansas City, and they’d take it on south to Houston, Texas.

We came down the hill, and back up in the middle of the train, a three-foot chunk of the rail broke at the edge of the bridge crossing over a pond/lake.  People were camping around it.  They’d go fishing and swimming out there.  It was 18 or 20 foot deep.  It had a stream that ran into it that kept water in it year round so people would camp out there. [listen to audio clip here 1:11:20]


The front engine and about 35 cars had already cleared the bridge on the other side and was on up the track.  All of a sudden cars started going off the bridge, down a 60 foot embankment, left and right, into the water.  We put 36 cars, out of 115, [into the water].  This was probably bigger than this building (Sherrod Library) and the other building together (Culp Center) maybe 2600 feet.  So when we started dumping all of these grain cars into that thing, people scattered, all of the cars and the campers and stuff were destroyed. The caboose and seven other cars were still on the tracks before the bridge.

As the engineer on this train, I immediately called the dispatcher to explain the situation and tell him we took the main line out of service. I told him we needed ambulances, police, and fire and rescue, because we don’t know the situation with the people below.

The engineer could talk to the conductor with a hand-carry radio/walkie-talkie.  It was a box with a handset.  Once the train stopped, the conductor looked over his checklist of all cars. He relayed to the engineer that the list was okay.  The brakeman walked the train.  The engineer waits for the manager to come and pick up the eight-track tape [“black box”].  Both the engineer and the manager initial the tape.

Emergency services arrive in about 30 minutes, but we wait three hours for railroad services to arrive.

Nobody got hurt.  The rear brakeman I had was a switchman out of Kansas City on that trip because they ran out of brakemen.  He was a flagman and a rear brakeman, and the conductor said you could see his hands turning white hanging on to that seat.  The conductor said, ’I was looking around to see how close it was gonna get to the caboose so I could get off of the caboose, if the caboose was gonna go in.’  If the caboose got close enough you’d bail out so you didn’t ride it into the derailment.  You did NOT want to go into a derailment.  And he said, ’He had ahold of that seat on both sides.’  And when we got back to Kansas City he said, he told that yard master ’If you ever call me for one of these freight trains again, I’m gonna come in here and kick your butt.  No if, ands, or buts about it.'  [listen to audio clip here 1:14:32]

The train went into that water, and it took ‘em two years to clean that pond out.  The railroad had to put divers in there to pump all that grain out of there.   It all went in there, so they [the railroad] had to clean it out.

6:30 p.m.

Once the crew has inspected all engines and cars, they tie it down.

The crew is picked up by a “limo” which is a four-door van with three seats.  They are taken out to dinner in Kansas City, courtesy of the railroad, then some of them proceed to a flophouse to spend the night.  Gary Emmert lived in Kansas City at this time.

A lady conductor I knew was called and got train orders from the UP to go to Omaha.   And she said, 'I’ve spent a week out here on your cotton pickin’ grain train derailment and we’re not gonna be done until next week'. She said, ‘I’m workin’ daylight till dark, 7 days a week, I’m gettin’ paid well; the brakeman is gettin' paid well; the engineer is gettin’ paid well. They’re puttin’ us up over here at this hotel.  They’re feedin’ us.  They’re payin’ for all the bills', and she said, 'We lie on our time, because you’re only supposed to work 12 hours,’   She said, 'We’ll stay out here from daylight to dark and they’re payin’ us in cash for the work beyond 12 hours.’   I’ve been in that situation already before.  And she goes over to her truck and she says, ’What I’m getting ready to show you will fit in the back of my pickup.’  And she had one of those small rangers when they first came out with the small pickups, and here’s an empty tank car – it crushed that car together so tight that you could've fit that tank in the back of her pickup.  I mean it just - whoosh!  [listen to audio clip here 1:12:42]  

More information on derailments may be found in the Archives of Appalachia's extensive railroad collections that include thousands of photographs dating back to the 1800s; over 300 ledgers; and over 700 boxes of research materials containing correspondence, daybooks, journals, timetables, day-to-day operational documents, financial statements, reports, engineering drawings, blueprints, maps, posters, motion pictures, songs and more.

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