A conductor or guard is a train crew member responsible for operational and safety duties that do not involve actual operation of the train/locomotive. The conductor title is most common in North American railway operations, but the role is common worldwide under various job titles. In Commonwealth English, a conductor is also known as guard or train manager.
On February 8, 1986, in what is now part of Yellowhead County, Alberta, Canada, 23 people were killed in a collision between a Canadian National Railway freight train and a Via Rail passenger train called the Super Continental, including the engine crews of both trains. It was the deadliest rail disaster in Canada since the Dugald accident of 1947, which had 31 fatalities, and was not surpassed until the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster in 2013, which resulted in 47 deaths.
The Federal Express was an overnight named passenger train run by the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad between Washington Union Station in Washington, D.C., and South Station in Boston, from 1912 to 1971. At different times, its route has taken it across the Hudson River via a car float between Port Morris and Jersey City, the Poughkeepsie Bridge, and finally the Pennsylvania Tunnel and Terminal Railroad. The final routing was identical to today's high-speed Northeast Corridor.
On January 4, 1987, two trains collided on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor main line near Chase, Maryland, United States, at Gunpow Interlocking. Amtrak train 94, the Colonial, traveling north from Washington, D.C., to Boston, crashed at over 100 miles per hour (160 km/h) into a set of Conrail locomotives running light which had fouled the mainline. Fourteen passengers on the Amtrak train died, as well as the Amtrak engineer and lounge car attendant.
A brakeman is a rail transport worker whose original job was to assist the braking of a train by applying brakes on individual wagons. The advent of through brakes, brakes on every wagon which could be controlled by the driver, made this role redundant, although the name lives on, for example, in the United States where brakemen carry out a variety of functions both on the track and within trains.
This article contains a list of terms, jargon, and slang used to varying degrees by railfans and railroad employees in the United States and Canada. Although not exhaustive, many of the entries in this list appear from time to time in specialist, rail-related publications. Inclusion of a term in this list does not necessarily imply its universal adoption by all railfans and railroad employees, and there may be significant regional variation in usage.
The San Bernardino train disaster, was a combination of two separate but related incidents that occurred in San Bernardino, California, United States: a runaway train derailment on May 12, 1989; and the subsequent failure on May 25, 1989, of the Calnev Pipeline, a petroleum pipeline adjacent to the tracks which was damaged by earth-moving equipment during the crash cleanup.
A freight conductor is a person who is employed by a railroad. The freight conductor is the lead employee assigned to a freight train, and is responsible for the smooth operation of the assignment, which includes reviewing schedules and maintaining communication with the train's crew members.
The Rennert railroad accident occurred in Rennert, North Carolina, on December 16, 1943. Seventy four people were killed when the northbound Tamiami Champion, an Atlantic Coast Line Railroad passenger train, struck the rear two cars of its southbound counterpart, which had derailed. It remains the deadliest train wreck ever in North Carolina.
The Rockport train wreck occurred in Rockport in Mansfield Township, New Jersey, United States, about three miles outside of Hackettstown, on June 16, 1925. A violent storm washed debris onto a grade crossing, derailing a Lackawanna Railroad (DL&W) train. The crash killed 42 passengers and five crewmen and injured twenty-three others.
The Shawnee was a passenger train operated first by then Illinois Central Railroad and then by Amtrak between Chicago, Illinois and Carbondale, Illinois. It operated from 1969 until 1986.
On February 16, 1996, a MARC commuter train collided with Amtrak's Capitol Limited passenger train in Silver Spring, Maryland, United States, killing three crew and eight passengers on the MARC train; a further eleven passengers on the same train and fifteen passengers and crew on the Capitol Limited were injured. Total damage was estimated at $7.5 million.
A switchman also known as pointsman or yardman (Commonwealth) is a rail transport worker whose original job was to operate various railway switches or points on a railroad. It also refers to a person who assists in moving cars in a railway yard or terminal.
An accident occurred on the four-track mainline of the New York Central Railroad at 10:02 P.M. on March 27, 1953, 2.4 miles (3.9 km) east of Conneaut, Ohio. It began when an improperly secured load of pipe broke loose from a gondola car on an eastbound freight train, damaging the westbound passenger track. A passing westbound freight crew notified the first train and stopped to assess what had happened, but a fast westbound passenger train could not stop and was derailed by the damaged track, colliding with the adjacent westbound freight. Finally, an eastbound fast passenger train struck the derailed equipment from the first two trains. There were 21 deaths and 49 people were injured.
The 1971 Salem, Illinois derailment occurred on June 10, 1971, when Amtrak’s City of New Orleans passenger train derailed near Salem, Illinois. It is sometimes referred to as the Tontiderailment, after the unincorporated community of Tonti, Illinois, which was the site of the crash. An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found that the derailment was caused by a false flange on a flat wheel caused by a seized axle bearing. The crash killed 11 people and injured 163. It was Amtrak's first fatal accident since assuming control of most intercity passenger trains in the United States on May 1, 1971.
On February 4, 2018, the southbound Amtrak Silver Star No. 91 passenger train from New York City to Miami collided with a stationary CSX Transportation freight train in Cayce, South Carolina, just south of the state's capital of Columbia on CSX's Columbia Subdivision. Two Amtrak crew members were killed and 116 other crew and passengers were injured.
The Great Northern H-5 was a class of 25 4-6-2 "Pacific" type steam locomotives that were originally built as E-14 4-6-0 "Ten Wheelers" by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1909 and operated by the Great Northern Railway until the mid-1950s.
The 1958 Sterlington railroad disaster was a head-on collision by two Erie Railroad trains on August 11, 1958 at 6:47 AM killing 5 people and injuring 22 to 36. The collision occurred when the operator in the signal tower at Suffern failed to hold the westbound train No. 53 at Suffern for the eastbound No. 50 commuter train from Monroe, New York, to Hoboken, New Jersey. When he realized his error, he attempted to contact the crews via radio but was unsuccessful due to a radio dead spot. The trains impacted head-on right in front of the now abandoned Erie Railroad depot in Sterlington, New York near Sloatsburg, killing the crew of the locomotive No. 859 from train No.50 as well as two passengers and injuring the crew of the locomotive No. 1402 from the westbound train.
Cedar Hill Yard is a classification yard located in New Haven, North Haven and Hamden, Connecticut, United States. It was built by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad in the early 1890s in and around New Haven's Cedar Hill neighborhood, which gave the yard its name. Electrical catenary for electric locomotives was added to the yard in 1915. To handle increasing traffic as a result of World War I, the yard was greatly expanded between 1917 and 1920 with additional construction along both sides of the Quinnipiac River. The construction project added two humps where railroad cars were sorted into trains by gravity. The yard was further modernized in the 1920s, becoming one of the busiest railroad yards in the United States, and the most important yard in the entire New Haven Railroad system.
The Baker Bridge train wreck occurred on November 26, 1905, in Lincoln, Massachusetts, when two passenger trains on the Fitchburg line of the Boston and Maine Railroad were involved in a rear-end collision. Seventeen people were killed in the wreck. Engineer Horace W. Lyons was charged with manslaughter; however, a grand jury chose not to indict him.
