Is Burkhardt French? There’s room for a resident idiot in this story. The various stories all make it sound like the engines lost all their cars which rolled into town by them selves. But I saw video late yesterday of the engines and numerous cars still connected to them. Someone had to manually disconnect a car coupling in the middle of the car line. No other way for that to happen except by direct action. They also had to manually disconnect the air line between the same two cars. Note that the air lines are, by themselves, strong enough to keep cars from rolling away on a slight slope. The engines were parked for the night meaning the air line was most likely dumped such that each car was braking itself. Getting those cars rolling would require climbing up each car and manually cranking off the brake wheel.
When I was in high school one of my occasional jobs was loading individual box cars. Moving them by hand required cranking off the manual brake wheel, jacking the car, then re-setting the brakes to make sure the car was still there next day.
There is no freeking way this was not sabotage. Just find out who would have known the train frequently stops on a slight slope. Note also that if the brakes on the cars weren’t holding it would have been very difficult to uncouple two cars. Pull pressure on the coupling locks it tightly in place-—it’s not like a suicide latch or pelican hook which disconnect with slight pressure. From the pics of the area it looks to me like the perpetrator picked a spot far enough down the car line to be out of sight of the engine area.
“When I was in high school one of my occasional jobs was loading individual box cars. Moving them by hand required cranking off the manual brake wheel, jacking the car, then re-setting the brakes to make sure the car was still there next day.”
The brakes where you crank the wheel where on cars I used to load with aggregate stone. Sometimes during loading the brake would fail and the hopper would start rolling down the track.
Always fun to get to the brake in time before hitting the derailer.
Along with at least a dozen recent "unexpected" events around the world...
I'm wearing a tungsten and sod helmet... not "tin foil"