:'(Conrail yard crews being too lazy to release the hand brakes on railcars, were notorious for leaving 3-6 hand brakes cranked on, a draft of freightcars, and they commonly shoved freightcars with the locked up wheels, dragging them until flat spots occured on the wheelsets. In the rain & snow, sparks and steam came from the railhead, as the wheelsets skidded over the wet rail surface. One CR car had such bad flatspots that it wouldn't even roll right, and had to be shopped to the RIP track for new wheelsets.
On the Horseshoe Curve a 6 unit DPU set of locomotives was roaring uphill in throttle 8, at 10mph...when the third locomotive back went into overdrive, as the rest of the locomotives went into emergency shut down, comming to a screeching halt...a 30 foot shower of bright flaming orange sparks emitted from all 12 of the one SD45's drive wheels, and continued for what seemed like a whole long minute of time, until the conductor came running along the running boards, franticly trying to shut down the out of control locomotive.
In the late 1980's a loaded Eastbound TOFC mail train was decending the "Slide" from Tunnelhill (a 7 mile downhill sliding board of trackage)...by repetedly applying the train brakes over and over again, they pissssed away all their air supply, and lost all airbrake power. For miles, they radioed in to Alto Tower of their ever increasing speed, and by the time they reached the "Horseshoe" they were doing in well in excess of 65 mph...out of control, the runaway derailed just short of the "long straight" at MP 241...Salvage crews were picking up lost US Mail letters for days on end in the stickerbush, tick infested hillsides...and inside of a couple hours the wreck crew had one of the 4 mainline tracks running through the derailment scene.
:hehe:Edit: The above CSX photos were caused by a ROCO locomotive (remote control) which was being operated from quite a long distance away, by a lone engineer on the ground, who was using a radio control tranceiver to operate the train, moving it back and forth (much like driving in "Free Roaming" in Trainz). He locked up the brakes...but kept the locomotive wheelsets revolving in a high rpm, until the track and wheelsets actually melted in place. I think there were quite a few sparks involved !
At the above mentioned website there are several photos of CSX equipment "picking a switch" in middle of the cars 2 wheelsets, and the 86 foot long box car or tank car traveled down two separate, parallel tracks, diagonally even !
