Background
Wamsutter is a town of 203 people (as of 2020, 103 in 1950) in the central USA, located in the federal state of Wyoming 282km/174mi west of Cheyenne and 332km/206mi east-northeast of Salt Lake City in Utah (both measurements in linear distance).
Wamsutter lies in Wyoming’s Red Desert, a high altitude desert spread through the southern part of the state on an area of 241000km²/9320mi² which is crossed by a few highways and one of the USA’s first trans-continental rail lines. The unelectrified double-tracked line runs east to west through the south of the state, largely paralleling the Lincoln Highway (Highway 80) between Rawlins in the east and Green River in the west.
The Train Involved
On the 27th of April 1953 a mixed goods freight train was scheduled to travel from Rawlins to Great River, consisting of sixty-two freight cars carrying various cargo from typewriters and tractors to a small herd of living pigs spread across four livestock-cars. Forming the end of the train in 63rd place was a caboose, a special train car carrying railway workers tasked with observing the train cars and helping in shunting-operations. This split the train’s crew into the “head end crew” (those riding on the locomotive) and “rear end crew” (those riding in the caboose). On the day of the accident the train would be driven by Mister Murry (42), assisted by fireman Mister Endres (23), who had just returned from serving in the Korean War for 2 years, and Mister Anderton (36) who was working as a brakeman. Riding in the caboose were Mister Walker, the conductor, and Mister Shurigar, another brakeman.
Pulling the massive freight train was Union Pacific (UP) locomotive number 4005, a “Big Boy”. The Big Boy is a huge steam locomotive introduced in 1941 for the main purpose of carrying lengthy freight trains through Wyoming and Utah. Each of the 25 Big Boys made measures 40.47m/133ft in length including the 7-axle pulled tender at a weight of 544 metric tons. The locomotive sits on two unpowered leading axles, two sets of 4 driven axles each and another 2 unpowered trailing axles. The driven axles were split into two articulated sets to allow the behemoth to navigate tighter turns than if the axles were fixed in position, similar to how most modern locomotives have wheelsets (“bogies” that can turn independent of the locomotive body. In operation the locomotives were fed with 28 metric tons of coal (although temporary oil-fire conversions were tested) from the tender and carried 90850l/24000gal of water. Despite their extremely high weight the Big Boys could reach 130kph/80mph, but were usually run below 100kph/62mph in service to increase lifespan and reduce stress/wear.
The Accident
A group of railway workers arrives at Red Desert (little more than a bus stop along the Highway), 8.5mi west of Wamsutter, in the early morning hours of April 27th 1953, having travelled on a small motorized cart with instructions to pick up some switch ties that are stored out there by the side of the rail line. Switch ties are extra long sleepers (the wooden or concrete beams connecting the rails of a railroad track) used at points to connect more than two rails. Shortly after arriving at their destination the workers are approached by a shepherd, asking for assistance to get his herd of sheep safely across the rail line. At the time of the accident Red Desert was the site of a siding along the rail line, temporarily expanding the double-tracked line to three tracks to allow storage or overtaking of trains. Mister Mayfield, the foreman of the workers, radios the dispatch center for information about the next scheduled trains at approximately 9:00am, before figuring out the best way to get the herd (estimated at around 1100 animals) across the rail line.
He decides that he will have two workers, so-called section men, stand by the rail line with flags telling approaching train drivers to slow down. Another pair of section men are to switch the points from the main line to the siding on his command, which will illuminate a warning signal further away, giving an extra warning to incoming trains. That way, Mister Mayfield figures, any approaching train, scheduled or unscheduled, can easily stop ahead of where the sheep cross the tracks. He sends out the section men, among them Mister Vicenty, who is in his second hour of work for Union Pacific and is tasked with operating the eastern set of points. An eastbound and a westbound freight train (the latter train being the one pulled by UP #4005) are scheduled to pass the siding before the crew could close the line and have approximately 35 minutes to get the sheep across the tracks.
By 9:15am UP #4005 had left Wamsutter behind and is approaching the eastern set of points at 80kph/50mph, just as Mister Mayfield has placed Mister Vicenty at his position, showed him how to operate the points, and started to head back west to get to the shepherd. Mister Vicenty, presumably misunderstanding the instructions, turns the points to the siding, only to look up and see the behemoth of a locomotive that is UP #4005 bearing down on him with ground-shaking noise. He frantically tries to set the points back to “straight ahead”, but runs out of time and has to abandon his position as to not be run over by the locomotive. The crew aboard the locomotive sees the points being set to “turn”, but has no chance to avoid the upcoming catastrophe.
UP #4005 reaches the points at 9:20am, travelling at 80kph/50mph. Way too fast for a set of points set to “turn”. The leading wheels of the locomotive are forced to the right, immediately derailing the heavy locomotive and tipping it over as it tears up the tracks below itself. If the pure running-noise of the Big Boy was ground-shaking, the effects of the nearly 600 ton piece of steel falling on its side must have felt like a proper earthquake. The tender tears into the cab as the locomotive derails, rotating around the same axis at a different speed, destroying the cab and itself as the locomotive, tender and several freight cars derail. The leading 17 freight cars suffer extensive damage up to and including complete obliteration, creating a towering pile of debris and cargo for the rest of the train to run into. Cars 13–17 suffer damage from running into each other, providing enough of a crumple zone for the rest of the train to stop largely undamaged. The rear end crew initially doesn’t even know why the train suddenly stopps, only realizing what had happened when they look out of the caboose and see the towering pile (some reports claim as much as 21m/70ft in height) of what used to be almost half the train up ahead. Mister Murry and Mister Endres had been killed instantly as the tender destroyed the cab, but Mister Anderton had survived the derailment, being severely injured and pinned in the wreckage.
Aftermath
Mister Walker runs up to the wreckage to check on the head end crew, but he can’t get near the locomotive as hot steam is hissing out of the destroyed piping, keeping anyone trying to approach the locomotive at a distance. Being forced to back off he heads to a trackside phone and calls the dispatch center, reporting the derailment and getting an emergency response underway. In the meantime Mister Shurigar walks up the rail line a mile (1.6km) to the east and attaches detonators to the rails to warn incoming trains. With the points utterly obliterated he figures that the signal might be out of order, so something else has to warn approaching westbound trains of the stopped freight train ahead. Detonators, also called Torpedos, are small explosive charges strapped to the top of the rails. Upon being compressed from being run over by a train they detonate with a deafening bang, loud enough to be heard over the running noise of any locomotive, and serve as a “stop immediately”-order.
It takes over 20 minutes for the steam to fade away enough for responders to approach the mangled remains of the Big Boy’s driver’s cab. Mister Anderton is alive but severely injured and has his leg pinned between a wooden seat and the steel side of the cab, leaving him trapped lying down in a tight space. Responders supply Mister Anderton with water and a cigarette he asks for while firefighters work on cutting metal and shoveling coal to get him out. A doctor eventually manages to reach through a small opening and administer a dose of morphine to limit his pain as he is forced to wait for the firefighters to cut him free. It ends up taking ten hours to pull Mister Anderton from the wreckage and rush him to a hospital.
Anderton actually remained conscious throughout, giving important information about the events that led to the catastrophic derailment. He recalled:
“He threw* it right in front of us. The switch, they threw it right in front of us, they didn’t give us a chance. I felt the engine rock. I don’t know how many times it rocked. The next thing I knew I felt the steam hitting me in the face and I thought I was a goner. All I could think of was getting my hands over my face.”
*”Throwing a switch” refers to changing the setting of a set of points, describing the lever being moved from one position to the other.
Early reports claimed that the railway workers had been able to talk to the train driver and the fireman, but when the remains of both are recovered with injuries making it clear that they had died before the train came to a rest, responders figure out that the workers had talked to each other from opposite sides of the toppled locomotive, misunderstanding each other and assuming they were talking to the already-deceased men in the cab. Sadly, Mister Anderton eventually passes away as well, dying in the late morning hours of April the 29th as he succumbs to severe burns on 80% of his body along with other complications in connection to being pinned and untreated for hours. With that, only the rear end crew survives. One cannot blame the responders, Mister Anderton’s position just made it impossible to pull him from the wreckage sooner or render aid beyond the morphine earlier than they did.
Limited rail traffic had been reinstated before Anderton had even been pulled from the wreckage, with workers constructing a temporary track around the wreckage for eastbound trains while westbound services were diverted further away. While most of the pigs on board the train had not survived the derailment workers recalled that some of the surviving ones provided an odd comic relief during the rescue and recovery-effort, with random pigs regaining consciousness then and now, taking off to run random patterns through the area. A few unfortunate examples headed for the nearby highway, forcing police officers to shoot the approximately 275kg/600lbs animals before they could endanger passing motorists.
When interrogating Mister Vicenty investigators immediately stumbled over the first puzzle-piece of how exactly the accident had come to be. Mister Vicenty, a Puerto Rican, barely spoke or understood english, requiring an interpreter for the proceedings. He claimed that the foreman, Mister Mayfield, had turned the points to “turn” before heading back west, and that he had merely tried and failed to set them back to “straight” ahead of the inbound train. This was both contradicted by Mister Mayfield and, before his passing, Mister Anderton, whose account the investigators valued fairly highly. Furthermore, Mister Anderton had recalled the signal ahead of the points to be off, had the points been set to “turn” at that point it would have been illuminated.
UP #4005 was eventually lifted up, turned upright and placed back on the tracks. This alone must have been a monumental task at the remote site, even with the 194 metric ton tender removed ahead of lifting the locomotive. Some of its connecting rods, the steel rods who translate the motion of the cylinders into spinning the wheels, had to be cut away before the giant locomotive could be towed to the shunting yard at Rawlins. Mister Dover, who was working at the yard as a callboy (a worker running around and retrieving/notifying the crew members that they were to report to a locomotive) and had assembled the train’s crew ahead of their doomed journey, later talked about the experience of seeing the severely damaged locomotive being towed into the yard. His retelling does an impressive job of communicating the atmosphere of the moment, so please allow me to quote in full:
“We all stood outside and in the still of darkness, not yet visible, we could hear this groaning and wrenching of metal coming very slowly down the rails being brought in behind the wrecking train, it was the ‘Big Boy’ and it gave you a very eerie feeling as it became visible in the old lamps of the Dispatch office, slowly it came into view and if ever I thought I had seen a ghost this was it. I did not know a ‘Big Boy’ could die but there it was and how sad it was just limping along like an old gray horse with one leg broken. The cab was completely gone, only the gray color of the firebox was visible and some of the side rods were missing and it looked as if even the frame had been broken. It just lumbered by all us, standing there with our mouths open not believing what we were seeing, this once huge, big, beautiful thing that was once a living machine of giant steel. It disappeared into the darkness like it came, being dragged like a person to the grave, at the east end of the yard for temporary storage. I could almost see Fireman Endres waving to me as it went past.”
Eventually the UP and the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC, the entity in charge of investigating railroad accidents) sent representatives to a closed-doors meeting, sorting out the who-did-what of the accident. The meeting, which in that form would never be accepted today, found both Mister Mayfield and Mister Vicenty at fault for the accident. The former had placed an extremely inexperienced worker with communication issues in a highly safety-critical role, while the latter had changed the setting of the points without permission, dooming the inbound train. According to the ICC he had been employed by the UP for all of 80 minutes, likely setting a tragic record for damage done vs time in employment. It’s unknown what sentences the men received and if either was allowed to return to UP for further employment.
UP #4005 was repaired after the accident, and evidence found during a later restoration indicates that a new tender was constructed, meaning the original one wasn’t salvageable. By 1962 all twenty-five “Big Boys” were retired from service, with #4005 remaining the only one to be involved in an accident. 8 of the 25 “Big Boys” made survive to this day, being spread around different museums in the USA. Only one, #4014, is in operational condition. Unit #4005, the one involved in this accident, is on display at the Forney Transportation Museum in Denver, Colorado (USA). According to the museum, some unspecified “very little evidence” of the accident can still be seen on the locomotive, despite undergoing a restoration after becoming a museum piece. There is no memorial at the site of the accident, which since lost the siding, but the museum holds “Big Boy Day” every year on the anniversary of the accident, which admittedly is more of a celebration of the locomotive than a solemn memorial event.
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