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That is awful. I hope there were no injuries but won't be surprised if there were. Clearly the green train rammed the standing red train. You can see the people waiting to board and as far as the last car of the red train was displaced from the track it was a pretty hard hit. There goes their insurance rates.
Lew
rattler21 posted:In which park did this occur? John in Lansing, ILL
According to the first sentence in the linked post, Knoebel’s Park.
Knoebel's in central PA (Elysburg). Great family/kids park.
Been there and ridden these trains several times. The operators are generally mature and seem well trained. (Not making a pun.) The track is signaled to keep the approaching train out of the station until the loading train has departed.
The equipment is 15” gauge. All the cars have brakes, I believe they are vacuum brakes, fairly common in live steam operations and some grand scale operations like this one. I hope no one was seriously hurt.
I hope that the place isn't sued out of business!
from a write-up i read about the train operation at that park, apparently the Pioneer train is a gas-powered steam outline locomotive and not live steam. without any knowledge of the incident, it certainly looks like the Pioneer loco/ train got away from the operator and rear-ended the streamlined car train. unless it was really traveling fast which doesn't seem likely, the struck train was very likely empty for the tail-end car to be displaced that much.
as a live steam operator who gets involved with pulling the public, believe me, nobody takes that responsibility lightly and our club has operating rules that are strictly adhered to. operators who actually drive the trains pulling the public are even more fully trained and must be approved by the board of directors before ever taking on that task. brakemen are also required in our operation so the engineer can concentrate on the locomotive operation while the brakeman/ conductor aids in safe operation keeping an eye on the entire train while in motion and when stopped. in our operation, there would have been a brakeman standing behind that train who's responsibility would have been to watch for any following traffic.
but of course, there is no indication from that picture whether one or both trains were moving and in what direction. there is just as good of a chance that the streamliner inadvertently backed into a stationary Pioneer locomotive/ train.
