I was on this engine in late December 1971 (?-I'll have to check my timebook for the date, but I know the month and year are right) when it was wrecked in Carbon Hill, Alabama. We were southbound about 9 pm and hit a cut of empty coal hoppers. They were left fouling the mainline, but not far enough to run through or open the switch. The joints were obviously not insulated. The first hopper we hit went over the lead unit 719 and drove the generator 18" backwards on the second unit, which number I do not remember. The engineer's name was Kennedy, fireman was Seales (sp?), conductor was Manasco, and I don't remember who the rear brakeman was. The next time I saw it, or at least recognized it, it was lying on its side on Waites hill on the Tupelo sub, as a result of a washout. I actually rode it some time later. That was the last time I saw it. I now see that it was scrapped in 1985. Sorry to learn that.
That's quite the story, thank you for sharing that. Looking at pictures of 719, I can't tell that it was ever damaged. What I do notice is that we have a picture of 719 taken a week or two before this happened. It didn't have the nose stripes at the time, but it did in later pictures. Stands to reason that they would have been added after the unit was repaired.
Where are the pictures you refer to? I've found some of 719, but would like to see more. As a side note, after the wreck, we were taken to Birmingham terminal to give our statements or whatever, and I came through Carbon Hill on my way home. The highway ran right by the tracks, and I saw maintenance of way workers, which was expected. But I stopped and one of them told me they were insulating the joints-before the track was even finished. If they'd been insulated before, we would have had a red board at the north end (controlled siding) and would have been at restricted speed. So I guess insulating them first was sort of a CYA deal. And the conductor name was Bynum.
November 26, 1971 Hamlet, NC http://frisco.org/mainline/wp-conte...Hamlet-North-Carolina-on-November-26-1971.jpg April 1973 West Memphis, AR http://frisco.org/mainline/wp-conte...34-at-West-Memphis-Arkansas-in-April-1973.jpg
Thank you so much for the pictures. The one taken in North Carolina-was that a run through from Frisco? I didn't realize Frisco had any trains going that far north on the Seaboard, if that's what it was. I now see what you're talking about the striped nose. The Nov. 26, 1971 had a plain unstriped nose. This was just a few weeks before it was wrecked. The April '73 picture had a striped nose. But it was definitely wrecked, at least twice I know of, personally.
Yes, the Frisco in it's last decade (ish) of existence funneled a lot of run through traffic to the SCL at Birmingham, and to the Southern at Memphis. The UP and BN at Kansas City, and the Santa Fe at Avard supplied the west coast connections for the SCL and Southern. If you think back far enough, you might remember some Union Pacific engines hanging around at Memphis. UP - Frisco power normally mixed from North Platte, NE to Memphis, while SCL - Frisco power normally mixed from Memphis to Jacksonville or Hamlet, NC. We have an extensive discussion on that topic over in this thread: http://frisco.org/shipit/index.php?threads/frisco-run-through-operations.13399/ If you want to start with a more summarized version, you can skip forward to page 6, I made a couple posts summarizing everything we had learned earlier in the thread.
