Quote:
Originally Posted by 4X4
As soon as I read that they didn't know how the cars got unshackled, it totally sounded like teens up to no good. C'mon, you were all thinking it too.
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Disclaimer - I worked IT for a railroad, not in the field
It's a bit more involved than just uninformed teens could manage - even if you did decouple the locomotive from the string of cars, as soon as physical separation occurred, the brake pipe connection would also sever, resulting in an immediate emergency application of the air brakes on every single car in the string.
It's more likely that the train did roll away with the locomotive attached, and that it came uncoupled as it ran along uncontrolled - with nobody onboard, it could have exceeded the speed that section of track could handle, or the slack in the train was running in and out, or something else that caused an initial derailment of one or more cars, resulting in the emergency brake application when the air line disconnected. At that point, the rest of the cars derailed and the locomotive kept hurtling forward under its own momentum.