Guest post by Rodney Aho.
"Five years ago a serious derailment occurred on the Washington Eastern Railroad just east of Govan, between Wilbur and Almira, about 70 miles west of Spokane. Seven loaded grain cars left the tracks, six of which were damaged beyond repair; hundreds of feet of track were ripped up. Thankfully there were no injuries. (I was not the engineer.)
"The cause of the accident was initially believed to be a broken rail. Our maintenance crew immediately began the arduous task of pulling the wreckage off the right of way and rebuilding the track so service could be restored.
"It was shocking to see how much damage occurred, even though the track speed limit at that location was just 10 mph. My back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that if the kinetic energy of the train’s 27 cars was concentrated and released at that one spot, it would equal six tons of TNT.
The potential for accidents always lurked in the back of our minds; consequently we took great care to work safely and always adhere to the operating rules."
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