This will probably not come as a surprise to anyone who reads this blog but railroaders have bad days. Sunday was one of those days for the herder.
Sunday’s herder was moving some power from the Vancouver roundhouse to the yard tracks in the port. Just to make things interesting, the switches at Vancouver were acting up and throughout the morning the dispatcher was unable to line them. When the herder showed up wanting to go down the hill the dispatcher gave them authority to go from the tail to the hill past the signal displaying stop indication. So far so good.
When the herder moved off the tail track things went wrong. The dispatcher’s instructions were quite specific about which switch needed to be lined though the instruction left out the fact there are two switches in the plant. The herder crew lined the switch the dispatcher noted but not the other and ended up running the lead trucks of the 5305 through the second switch. Oh oh.
In the photograph below the herder conductor is talking with the conductor and brakeman off a yard job that was also sitting on the tail track. I think the conductor’s hand motions pretty much sum up his feelings about what happened. Fortunately the only thing injured in this whole thing was a switch and a bit of productivity.
