Galesburg Yard -The Most Expensive RCO Accident to Date. 

Early one Saturday morning a hump crew shoved over the hump to get some misroutes caught in the retarder. When they coupled on to the cars they tore the knuckle out of a car farther back in the train. They backed up to resume humping which widened the distance between the two groups of cars. The cars broken off on the hill followed the movement back, slowly at first, then quickly gaining speed to in excess of 25 MPH. The RCO operators stopped their movement a distance back on the hump lead and the cars now speeding back struck the stopped cars. Seventeen cars of the movement derailed. Reportedly fifteen of the derailed cars are going to have to be scrapped. The cars tumbled to both sides of the hump lead. 

On one side the Quincy Main Line was fouled eight minutes ahead of when Amtrak would come through at 60 MPH. On the other side an empty coal train was struck with flying cars derailing three cars in that train. The track was out for about 24 hours while they picked up the mess.

The interesting thing is this accident almost happened a short time earlier when in the same circumstances, disconnected cars were left draped over the hump, just the right number of cars broke off to balance over the crest. 

The RCO operators noticed the separation and pulled the cars they still had back the hump lead to what they thought was a safe distance. The local management rewarded them with watches for their quick thinking. The funny thing is the difference between the two incidents had nothing to do with them pulling back. They could neither pull back far enough or fast enough
to outrun the cars if they would have followed them and the result would have been the same.

Saturday morning was the third train handling incident on the hump to be known.