RDG CNJ Wreck at Allentown 1964 

I hired out in the car department at Southern railway in ‘79 and we were still doing it this way into the early 90’s! Our hook was a massive Industrial Brownhoist 250 ton capacity beast with twin Detroit Diesels and a third one running a big electrical generator. The first time we’d encountered wreck contractors was, I believe, the very early 90’s on a big wreck on the Winston-Salem Southbound Ry. in Ansonville, NC. Seaboard System/CSX had their equally massive derrick out of Hamlet, NC there also, but the real elephant in the room was a group of Caterpillar sidewinders along with Cat track loaders belonging to Donahue Bros. out of WVa. Within a year or so, our fabled Spencer Derrick was taken out of service and that work was gone forever! The Derricks, regardless of steam, diesel, 120, 200 or 250 ton, were a bear to operate! A veritable wall of controls, none of which were labeled, and also sported the intensely frustrating feature of some controls being affected by the position other controls were in, so for instance a particular lever might swing the Derrick to the left by pulling it up this time, but next time if other controls had been changed, pulling that same lever up would make it turn right! This video showed a couple instances where the Derrick was pointed to the side and hooked to a caboose while the locomotive moved the wreck train and drug the crummy along with it! We were never permitted to do that because of the risk of turning the hook over! Those days were full of VERY heavy work, crazy long hours (when the Derrick was called, it could be as much as two weeks before you saw home again!), and massive paychecks! Very dangerous work though! Great video! I’ll shut up now!

My uncle who worked for the railroad up north till he retired used to say that the rule book Was Written in Blood. Those old school railroaders were tough bastards.

Great footage. Glad someone saved it all these years.

That was back when you could still take a CNJ train from Allentown to Jersey City. Reading discontinued their Allentown to Harrisburg passenger service in 1964 but continued the Bethlehem to Philly service. Lehigh Valley ended passenger service through Allentown in Feb 1961. Amtrak wants to start a new train service from Allentown to New York. It would run over Norfolk Southern freight lines into NJ and then onto Amtrak at Newark, NJ. CNJ discontinued its service from Allentown in 1967 and cut it back to Hampton, NJ and then extended back to Phillipsburg in 1974 but then NJT cut back to High Bridge, NJ at the end of 1983. NJT took over the commuter rail operations from Conrail in early 1983. You could see NJT F40 diesels and NJT painted coaches at Phillipsburg station in 1983.

Working steam crane being filmed in sound ! Love it

Excellent video and another top job in the sounds department, if I didn't know your stuff I'd have thought it was original sound as the steam crane was spot on. Great to see them drop a couple back onto bogies and just roll them out of the way. Railway mounted cranes are fantastic really but steam ones are superb and quite complex bits of equipment. I'd love to know how many crew it had as someone needs to keep an eye on the water and fire.

CNJ #5 crane. I believe that's the crane on display at Steamtown.

I remember when the spectators could get that close to the action.

Excellent quality film ! That was a bad one ! 😳

Back in the days before hardhats, and when trucks didn't self-disassemble upon derailing.

That's a insane derailment

Very interesting. I could listen to the sound without visual and still enjoy it if I had too.

Excellent foley editing!

Very interesting! Thanks for posting.

Wow! Great footage!

Outstanding content. Thanks for sharing!!

I was a little surprised that the officials didn't notice there was someone filming the wreck cleanup. Possibly, as it appears, the person was filming far enough from the wreck, and the suits were more focused on the cleanup efforts.

Great Video !

cracked on with it and got it done, real good work.

A great film document.