Bad day at the diamond

[Joe Land]

Mitchell, IN.

[Sharon Eberhard]

WHEN ??

HOW???

[Joe Land]

August 14, 1995  One of the trains ran a stop signal.

[Geof Burns]

Joe,
A minor correction. One of the train engineers ran a stop signal! Don't blame the train!
Geof

[Ron Marquardt]

Geof, that is only an opinion not necessarily supported by any firm evidence you have at your disposal at this time.     / Ron

[Justin Asbery]

I remember that day. Spent most of it watching the cleanup. Thanks for posting it Joe.

[Tim T Swan]

Justin, explain what happened please.

[Justin Asbery]

The Northbound (Union Pacific) failed to stop and ran into the third unit of the eastbound (CSX). The locomotives of the northbound and the third unit and first car of the eastbound were the only ones that derailed. It took several hours for the cleanup crews to get everything back the to the way it was before the accident. Luckily the accident happened the way it did, there was a business on the northwest side of the diamond and an appartment building on the southwest side. If either train was going the other direction it could have been worse.

[Joe Land]

Thanks Justin. I could not report the details, but I knew you could.
Here is another photo of the wreck from the Bedford Times Mail.

[Tim T Swan]

Thanks, Justin.  Perhaps Deputy Stafford can fill us in with some more details.  Is Steve aboard the Board?

[Pete Pedigo]

Yes, he has been signed up for awhile and has been reading.  I don't know if he has posted or not.     I spoke with him yesterday.   He is busy with his hovercraft a lot right now. 

[Victor Sauerheber]

Seems I remember talking to a CSX trainmaster back when this happened, and he told me that there was a problem with the signaling system. Something about that if a train on the B&O came in on the siding track the system would not set up the signals for the Monon tracks correctly and that is what happened here.Don't know if this is true or not, just passing on what I heard. Vic

[Justin Asbery]

Wouldn't that make the station agent responsible for letting the crews of both trains know where the other train was and who had the right of way?

[Mark Johnson]

The old interlocking machine for the Mitchell crossing is down at French Lick. I suppose if we were really into it, it would be possible to reverse engineer the thing to figure out how things could go wrong.

[As best I remember, this accident happened before the original interlocking was changed out. Indeed, the wreck may have precipitated the replacement of the equipment.]

Mark J