From: bill@mathnx.math.byu.edu (Bill Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.railroad
Subject: Yikes! (long)
Date: 18 Nov 1992 19:18:43 GMT
Organization: Brigham Young University
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: mathnx.math.byu.edu

With all the "stupid people" running amok, as evidenced by anecdotes
relayed in this group, I thought I'd add one, which is rather embarrassing
since it happened to me (about 20 years ago)!  

My brother, who is an avid shade tree mechanic, bought an old Jeep
pickup truck to have fun with.  It was four wheel drive, of course, and he
got the brilliant ;-) idea of trying to modify it so it would go out on 
the mud flats west of town.  He did this by putting dual wheels on both 
the front and back of the thing.  The duals were constructed in a 
rather crude way, by welding cut pipe to a lug nut on one side and to
a stud on the other to connect two standard wheels together.  One
Saturday night he finished and (it was dark, in the winter, snow
on the ground) came over to my place (I had just gotten married) to
take me for a spin.  Against my better judgement, I went with him.
We went out to the flats without incident and had a great time going
further and further out through the muck and saltwater pools.  While
we were having all this great fun, I noticed that we were getting closer
to the UP main line which heads west out of town.  About every half-hour
it seemed like a big freight (double diesels many times)
would go roaring past at 70 mph or so - Suddenly we felt a bump and noticed
one of the front wheels had come off, just the outside wheel, so we
figured we could get out of there ok, but as we were turning around,
the outside wheel on the other side came off and went rolling off
into the darkness.  Then almost immediately, there was another loud 
noise and we came to a dead stop.  I got out and found that on my
side there was no front wheel.  The lugs had been torn off the hub.
The axle was in the dirt.  We were about ten miles from any road and
it was 11 P.M.  Luckily, we had become disabled on dry ground so we
didn't have to wade.  Upon some experimentation we found we could go
backwards if I pushed on the front of the truck.  We got another
brilliant notion: go over to the tracks, backup along the (rather
high) ballast with wheelless axle on the up side so it wouldn't dig in.
We figured we could at least get to the road that way.  When we got the
thing over to the tracks we found there was one flaw.  In order both
back up and have the axle up we would have to cross the tracks!
Well cut it short, we did try to cross the tracks and got stuck with
the back wheels sitting between the rails.  We tried everything to
get the truck off in either direction, nothing worked.  I looked down
the tracks and saw what I had been dreading.  A speeding headlight,
heading for us, about a mile away- no way it would ever stop for us. I
had visions of the newspaper headlines - being in jail for manslaughter
of the headend crew, etc.  We gave it one last try and for no apparent
reason, the truck went forward off the rails just in time (with me
pushing from behind).  I don't think the crew even saw us.  We walked
the twenty miles home on the right of way.  Got the vehicle out
the next day by driving *forward* on the ballast ;-) [I had to end
up sitting on one fender with hood up periodically holding my hand
over the carb throat to get it to suck enough gas to run, we were on such
a steep angle! The guys driving the local had a good laugh watching
us crawl along as they rolled slowly by :-)]

-Bill

--
Professor William V. Smith
Phone: 1-801-378-2061 Fax: 1 801 378 2800
email: smithw@hamblin.math.byu.edu  or  uunet!hamblin.math.byu.edu!smithw
NeXTmail: bill@mathnx.math.byu.edu
SMail: Math Dept. -- 314 TMCB; BYU; Provo, UT 84602 (USA)
Newsgroups: rec.railroad