Bad day to be riding the rails
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Joplin quilters help train derailment victims
For the passengers displaced in Saturday’s tragic Amtrak derailment, Montana’s Hi-Line might have felt like the middle of nowhere. But as they quickly found out, sometimes the best people in the world come from the middle of nowhere.
Look no further than the Quilting Ladies of Joplin, which formed in 1967. They range in age from 72 to 92 and meet every Tuesday at the Bethel Lutheran church for friendship, fellowship and quilting.
“Sometimes we don’t get a lot of quilting done, we just do a lot of visiting,” said 79-year old member Jean Johnson.
The group works for hours making quilts of all shapes, colors, and sizes, and then stockpiles them in the basement of the church.
“I was in Choteau and my daughter called about getting quilts because they needed some and I said absolutely,” Betty said. “There’s a whole pile, sitting on a table downstairs, just go get them.”
Betty’s daughter Julie Erickson grabbed the quilts and distributed them to passengers at the Liberty County Community Center.
“You know it just gave you a good feeling,” said 86-year old Fern Wolery. “When you get older, you don’t accomplish a lot but this way, you accomplished something.”
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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Joplin quilters help train derailment victims
For the passengers displaced in Saturday’s tragic Amtrak derailment, Montana’s Hi-Line might have felt like the middle of nowhere. But as they quickly found out, sometimes the best people in the world come from the middle of nowhere.
Look no further than the Quilting Ladies of Joplin, which formed in 1967. They range in age from 72 to 92 and meet every Tuesday at the Bethel Lutheran church for friendship, fellowship and quilting.
“Sometimes we don’t get a lot of quilting done, we just do a lot of visiting,” said 79-year old member Jean Johnson.
The group works for hours making quilts of all shapes, colors, and sizes, and then stockpiles them in the basement of the church.
“I was in Choteau and my daughter called about getting quilts because they needed some and I said absolutely,” Betty said. “There’s a whole pile, sitting on a table downstairs, just go get them.”
Betty’s daughter Julie Erickson grabbed the quilts and distributed them to passengers at the Liberty County Community Center.
“You know it just gave you a good feeling,” said 86-year old Fern Wolery. “When you get older, you don’t accomplish a lot but this way, you accomplished something.”
@george-k said in Bad day to be riding the rails:
Joplin quilters help train derailment victims
For the passengers displaced in Saturday’s tragic Amtrak derailment, Montana’s Hi-Line might have felt like the middle of nowhere. But as they quickly found out, sometimes the best people in the world come from the middle of nowhere.
Look no further than the Quilting Ladies of Joplin, which formed in 1967. They range in age from 72 to 92 and meet every Tuesday at the Bethel Lutheran church for friendship, fellowship and quilting.
“Sometimes we don’t get a lot of quilting done, we just do a lot of visiting,” said 79-year old member Jean Johnson.
The group works for hours making quilts of all shapes, colors, and sizes, and then stockpiles them in the basement of the church.
“I was in Choteau and my daughter called about getting quilts because they needed some and I said absolutely,” Betty said. “There’s a whole pile, sitting on a table downstairs, just go get them.”
Betty’s daughter Julie Erickson grabbed the quilts and distributed them to passengers at the Liberty County Community Center.
“You know it just gave you a good feeling,” said 86-year old Fern Wolery. “When you get older, you don’t accomplish a lot but this way, you accomplished something.”
Damn Christians...
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@george-k said in Bad day to be riding the rails:
Joplin, MT:
Does anyone else out there just spent an oddly large amount of time surfing around the world zoomed in (like this picture) at various remote locations? Sometimes with streetview, but normally not. I enjoy it... maybe I should work for a satellite imagery company.
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@george-k said in Bad day to be riding the rails:
Joplin, MT:
Does anyone else out there just spent an oddly large amount of time surfing around the world zoomed in (like this picture) at various remote locations? Sometimes with streetview, but normally not. I enjoy it... maybe I should work for a satellite imagery company.
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Some interesting video of the site immediately after the derailment and also of the cleanup.
Link to video@george-k said in Bad day to be riding the rails:
Some interesting video of the site immediately after the derailment and also of the cleanup.
Link to videoWow, what an amazing post-disaster interview - the guy is so eloquent and clearly very observant.
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Damaged Tracks Caused Train Derailment That Killed 3
Worn and poorly-maintained train tracks that should have been replaced caused the 2021 derailment of an Amtrak train in Montana that killed three people and injured 49 others, federal investigators said Thursday.
The derailment occurred on Sept. 25, 2021, near Joplin, about 150 miles northeast of Helena, Mont. The accident sent the train’s eight passenger cars careening off the BNSF Railway, with four toppling onto their sides, forcing rescuers to extricate passengers.
The crash could have been avoided if federal regulations that required replacing the rail — which was worn down, misaligned and would move up and down with the train’s weight — had been followed and if a rail inspector had not been so overworked that he had had time to properly assess the track, according to a report by the National Transportation Safety Board.
“The track inspector’s workload likely prevented him from performing a timely walking inspection of the track in the area of the derailment,” investigators said in the report, noting that BNSF Railway Company, the freight railroad that owned and maintained the tracks, had not properly managed employee workloads.
According to the report, the inspector tasked with checking that particular piece of track had regularly been working more than 13 hours a day in the two weeks leading up to the crash; in the four days before, he had worked more than 57 hours.
The inspector had also raised concerns about the portion of track in question, and just two days before the crash, he had driven past the site but did not get out of his vehicle to view it on foot, the report said. “The most likely reason that the track inspector did not perform a walking inspection of the derailment curve in about a year is that he did not have time,” federal investigators said, noting that the site had last been inspected on foot in the fall of 2020.
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Wow. Yes, that's the same train route hubby and I took, George. How tragic for these families.
@brenda said in Bad day to be riding the rails:
Wow. Yes, that's the same train route hubby and I took, George. How tragic for these families.
I've ridden the Empire Builder 4 times. I think it's my favorite route, just for the sake of scenery.
Interesting how long it took for NTSB to come up with a report. It'll be interesting to see the ramifications of what they found.
From what I gather, there are all kinds of signals that relay rail integrity to the dispatcher (or even the crew). If a disruption occurs, that should send a signal to dispatch to close the block until the cause of the signal is evaluated.
Seen on various Amtrak-related sites:
The BNSF former GN High Line is generally maintained to high standards and its FRA Class 4 status requires track inspections at least twice weekly. BNSF generally does not cheap out on maintenance on its mainlines.
The next train over that section likely would have derailed, passenger or freight.
This one is probably in the "s happens" category. However, with that said, the NTSB is now likely laser focused now on track maintenance on that section of track and any irregularities or bad practices will no doubt be in its final report.
Yeah, my experience of BNSF tracks has been that they do keep them upto standard to pass the FRA track category requirements, but not much beyond that. Of course the ex-CB&Q tracks are usually significantly worse than the ex-BN tracks though.
