Hinkle Yard (Union Pacific)

December 8, 2003

On December 8, there was a remote control derailment at the east end of the bowl tracks at Hinkle. Several witnesses said it appeared to have been caused by a rail that had rolled. One of the locomotives was at a 45 degree angle and looked like it came very close to tipping over. With no engineer on the locomotive to know that the locomotive had derailed, the RCL set just kept chugging away at the set speed and tore the hell out of the track and locomotives. The local yardmaster stated that it took almost 2 days to get things back to normal and that one of the section crew had told him that he had never seen such a torn up mess. I also talked to one of the Hinkle RCO yard foreman who told me that the one who put the RCL into emergency was a new hire switchman who just happened to be in the vicinity when the derailment occurred. If he hadn't been Johnny on the spot the derailment damage would have been much higher because the only thing that would have stopped the derailed RCL would be when it went to emergency.