Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 142: Big Bayou Canot Train Wreck

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

learn to read your radar folks Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod/ Send us stuff! our address: Well There's Your Podcasting Company PO Box 26929 Philadelphia, PA 19134 DO NOT SEND US LETTER BOMBS thanks in advance in the commercial: Local Forecast - Elevator Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

We got a good, harrowing story today. All right, let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Oh, we've been recording for 30 seconds.

Motherfucker. Yeah. So I get sort of the natural banter. Ah. You get the drop on us. You're like a fucking, like an ambush predator, but for the bits that go in a little bit. I love to get flashbanged by my own podcast.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Justin stacking a stack of one Stacking up on the door of the podcast. Yes. Alice you saw that FBI open up drop. Oh god I do but it's so loud like it's the kind of thing that just like Scrolling scrolling scrolling through like 1500 drops Yeah, that's how Justin starts every episode. Yeah, just like CS gas coming in through the windows. Time to podcast, motherfuckers. No, no. I'll comply, I'll comply, not damn.

Roll in and instantly shoot the dog. Yeah, no, dog. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We podcast with speed, surprise, and violence of action. You know, and we take all of those very seriously. Our chief weapon of surprise, surprise and fear. Do you rely on the old out of fear?

The Spanish Inquisition and SWAT teams. Yeah. Stronger than it might appear. And just they don't have the nice red uniforms, is the thing. Yeah, I would think red SWAT team, uniform would kind of pop off. Like a sort of cardinareal SWAT team.

Oh yeah. I guess that's what the musketeers were for research. Also, the red coats, the head of the whole, the recall of the coat. Yeah. You imagine like an 18th century, like red coat SWAT team. I mean, here's the thing, right? Americans will constantly like hype up the revolutionary war to the point that I once

saw a multi-cam tactical with like a hook side Velcro for patches. Try corn hat. Look like absolute shit. And yet, when you treat theak and yet when you try and like tactically by the red coats all of a sudden no one's interested and I think that's a real sort of asymmetry. Oh yeah. Anyway you just get like a regular like Booney Hat and you just like sew it up in like three corners. It's easy to do. Yeah. change your life. Liam. Yeah, well, so here's the thing, right? Is that I, I'm going to go cosplay the Revolutionary War now.

Mm-hmm. All right, cool. Are you going to be like a hasyan? No, what's what's what's up? I would rather be dead than German. Whatever. I'd be definitely poorly organized state militia. And then I'll get a three percent or a thing and put it on the back of my truck and then I'm gonna have to order that. Poorly organized state militia. And then I'll get a three percenter thing and put it on the back of my truck.

And then I'll record YouTube videos from my truck. You could go and do a whiskey rebellion. I, before we totally lose their attention, I gotta say one thing. I know what you guys. You subscribe to the YouTube channel. I mean, subscribe to Patreon too, but subscribe to the YouTube channel

because we are 3,000 something subscribers away from getting a plaque with our names on it that we can keep in our houses and show to our parents when they accuse us of never having a mounted to anything. Yes. Remember. Okay, so here's the thick smash that subscribe button and hit that bell and the like button. That's right. My parents tell me every time they see me how cool they think this podcast is. Oh, very sweet. Yeah. Yeah. We love our supportive family. Don't be folks. I am mom and dad and any of my mom and dad's friends listening and now say all the curse words in order. Yeah. George Collins 12 words you can't say on television. That's right. That's right. God straight through the devil's dictionary. I'm going to relate to Ambrose Beers a lot basher in a couple of weeks when the episode that gets us all killed us out. Oh yeah, we got to record the episode that gets us all killed. Ambrose Beers wrote

a famous short story about a bridge and this is another bridge. It's an outpriced bridge. It's a beautiful segue. Yes. So this is the big bayou cano bridge. It looks that Alabama. You may notice that it's broken. Also, there's broken train all around it. I can tell it's the south because the water is sort of like the color of antifreeze and also visibly about three inches deep. Yes. Yes, but despite that one locomotive is poking halfway out of the ground over here. That's mud. I assume. Yes. And this is like choked with various invasive grasses, industrial waste runoff.

Possibly. As a gators. Yeah, exactly. What's gators love industrial runoff? Don't fuck with gators. I don't like that. It just makes them stronger. I fear and respect alligators. As we've made clear, like a big, scaly dog.

It's a shitty thing that it's like another animal. Yeah. It really worked there, Steve. The only like semi-osically cool cool right-wing thing is that Florida crocodile flag that's like let us alone with the cool crocodile, you know, the shame. They don't deserve it. I also like the, I, I regretted for you. I really like the, and appeal to heaven flag. Hmm, but I'm not a lot to like that one anymore because the fucking we've should take it. I know. Yeah. So yeah, this M-track train should not be like this.

Today we're going to talk about, yeah, Kent Park there. They were going to talk about the big Bayou Kanau rail accident of 1993. First, we have to do the God damn news. We have so much news. Yeah, we have a lot of news today. Is this, what's, oh, there's just a loose latex glove in this photo. Yeah, right at the bottom.

That's a lot of trash in this. Yeah, the whole, the whole, yeah, New York, the whole place is trash. Well, good thing that they can just leave the, the one guy on Twitter who is like, you're an idiot for thinking people should just just for thinking people should use the dumpsters. That's why you use dumpsters. So you don't have literally floating trash here. New York City has once again been destroyed. It's been destroyed by rain. The fifth time we've counted, eventually we will get to like all the plagues of Egypt who have descended upon New York City. I was was about to say what's next on the list locusts. I think locusts. Yeah. And then the oil. Giant frog. Yeah. Yeah.

Really big frog. Eric Adams is going to like make the like heart hands with the frog. He's going to fist bump the frog. I actually don't know what Eric Adams is going to say about this because he hasn't said shit like I don't think there is there's there's no floods in the plagues. It's just turning the water to blood. That's the closest thing. Well, I mean, turning the water to poop water is still pretty impressive. But so Eric Adams has not said anything about this, which is sort of unusual as I understand it. Like most people just woke up to, you know, water. And his press team are on Twitter saying, actually, you're doing like microaggressions

against me because we put out a press release at like 1140 at night the night before saying, hey guys, this is very world bad bye. So there's going to be a bit of water. Hope you don't have a basement apartment. Yeah, it was a travel advisory. And I think this is maybe above the level of a travel advisory. My favorite thing that I've seen, aside from this guy here, trying to kind of mop the street while the NYPD drive past him, is I've seen people trying to descend into flooded subway stations as if they can catch a train in the flooded subway station. Why would you do that?

In fairness, the subway probably is still running. I think I think it's wrong. It may not. It's on second. I think that's really big like tank style snorkel on all of the cars. Well, they have a big vacuum train for this situation and a couple big pump. No, no, they've suspended service. Huh.

Under the sea, join me 20,000 leagues beneath Fifth Avenue. Yeah, it's like thunderball down there. You know, they've got the guys with the spear guns, just 50 like NYPD, Transit Bureau guys all milling around on their phones, but they're wearing full scuba gear. I'm just, I don't know how flooded flooded it is. You know, that this is sort of my, the way I've been reacting to the news all day is like, okay, this seems to be confined largely to a few neighborhoods. This is not like an extensive flood that is shut down the city. Yeah, I mean, I'm having destroyed it.

Yeah, and the sea is still going, baby. Yeah. I feel like if you go to a subway station and the water is like coming up the stairs, you shouldn't have to do that. Yeah, you shouldn't have to do like a sort of a Chernobyl basement dive, sort of. There shouldn't be a sump involved in you getting into the subway. Submarine station. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, big rainstorm, urban infrastructure, not able to cope. Granted, I think if you wanted to do something, so it would be able to cope,

you'd be building just some insane flood water tunnels that would take, you know, 50 years to finish. And by the time they were finished, they'd be obsolete because of climate change. So what do you do? Only building like massive breakwaters that are also not going to do anything. Well, they've been saying they're going to do it.

Yeah. Oh, that's almost as good. Yeah, that's about it. All you can expect. We're investing $50 billion into this go. There's mop with this. We're putting the entire capital budget into this guy who's going to say we'll get around to it. We're getting around to it. Yeah. I can't wait to see what Eric Adams says after the fact, given that before the fact he said nothing, I can't wait to see. Oh my god, it's going to save us all or whatever.

Yeah, the robot cop is going to be defeated by like three feet of water. Yeah, it's like the fucking Marty robot and the giant that every time I block eyes with it, I just want to tip it over and run. I fucking have that. We know how the cop robot does with water because the last time I saw one was in San Francisco many years ago, like almost 10 years ago, I think, where it just drowned itself. It sort of flung itself into a fountain. That was in Georgetown. Was it? Was this happened multiple times? Did they just yearn for

death? Yeah, I think so. I think they're not sure. I'm not sure. Oh, that was, yeah, that was a security robot in critical condition after killing throughout the top of the town. Yeah, I'd like to die on the table after eight hours of surgery. like died on the table up to eight hours of surgery. That's at the give it a full funeral like the potty enough. Yeah, the same way. Yeah, when a canine officer dies in the line

of duty because it was left in the hot car. It was left in a hot car. Oh, tragically died in the line of duty. Yeah, yeah, fuck a lot, but pickle folks is going to get real. Yeah. Real a couple for all of us. Yeah, so New York City has been once again rendered uninhabitable, where Philly gets skipped by the fun weather every single time. This is just like John Boyce's 177076.

This is crazy. I was just thinking of me. It's a little crowded and humid. Clouded up and humid out there, but otherwise Philly is fine. I'm unhappy we're going to have all these refugees, but what's he going to do? Yeah. I mean, you know, open your arms. I want you to be a new.

And then come into a kind of like a comedy sing culture that is true economy. Please tell me what you mean, New Yorkers rise. Yeah, I'm just like clipping that out of isolation to make it seem like sort of like anti-immigrant sentiment. You went to the border with Elon Musk the other day. That had to look so goddamn dumb. You know, other day. That had to look so goddamn dumb. You know, there news. Hey, I have fine steam died. If only this had

happened while we were recording, we could have had another RBG moment. Yeah, I know, because that's it's not funny in the same way. You know, because it the way that when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, it was like, oh my God, we're incredibly screwed. And that's really funny. You know, we're already incredibly screwed. Now we're just like, this doesn't really, I don't feel like it changes anything.

It changes. She was the tiebreaker on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which I mean, a lot of good she was able to do with that. Like one of the sort of big, like our nation should be in mourning posts was someone posted a photo of her like leaning over LBJ style, or anime style, depending on how you want to look at these things. Leaning over Lisa Mckowski, no, Susan Collins, to be like- No, Lisa Mckowski.

Whatever. One of the two sort of like fucking waiverers to be like you got a vote against Kavanaugh and obviously that worked and that you know because Kavanaugh is not a Supreme Court justice. I guess to her loan of small credit Lisa Rickowski didn't vote for him. She did the job she set out to do.

Yeah, she she got pressed against a wall by an older woman and you know, had the desired effects. Yeah. Yeah. Oh God. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah. I mean, so I'm trying to say, what's your, I've been mulling this all day since I heard the news.

What's your favorite, um, Diane Feinstein moment? Because I think my favorite Diane Feinstein moment. Oh, the Confederate flag in San Francisco is objective. Oh, that's, that's strong. That's a strong answer. Uh, yeah. Uh, I was also thinking of the Confederate flag and San Francisco is objective. Yeah. That's that's strong. That's a strong answer. Yeah. I was also thinking of Confederate flag and then I forget. I forget all the stuff she did to the gaze.

Yeah. I just got it with a big crowd. Down white. She inexplicably tried to get the USS Missouri home ported in San Francisco. She, like, may be fucked Roger Moore in order to get the permits for filming for you to a kill in San Francisco. My favorite, yeah, listen to Kill James Bond, they have said on Vito Kill, there's more details on that. My favorite, Dianne Feinstein moment is a sort of a tie, right, between the time when a bunch of adorable, precious, precocious children highly motivated to save our planet from the sunshine movement came to her office and we're like, can you do something about the climate?

And she was like, no, listen, you little shit. So I know what I'm doing. And then immediately got dementia and then died. That's one. Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one. The other one is when she sabotaged the police investigation into the night stalker, Richard Ramirez, by disclosing a bunch of details that the police didn't want her to disclose on live TV and therefore handing them directly to Richard Ramirez, which led to him like hucking his extremely distinctive shoes off the golden gate bridge and closing down an entire line of inquiry. Awesome.

Yeah, she's so cool. You know, a nation mourns. Yeah, I remember, you know, always, always excelled at doing her job of being weird and not so much. Yeah. We are doing all the posting. We're doing all the footing. Yeah.

Um, what you got to do to survive in San Francisco. Um, and now not seemingly. Yeah. And now, not. Yeah. So RIP to lady who should have retired earlier. Yeah, I mean, she kind of, it's this fraught position where she was like basically elder abuse,

but also kind of deserved it. Wow, what a sentence. The same situation that happened in like most German old people's homes at the end of the 20th century. In other words, like, yeah, okay, it's just not great. But you kind of had a coming. You heard it here, folks. Alice Colblekilly believes Dianne's.

I'm still like, yes, that's right. That's a Nazi. I mean, listen, if you don't want me to call you a Nazi, just don't fly the Confederate flag off a public building. Yeah, that's a good point. In other news, jarring shifts in time for the back half of the news. Oh, yeah, as are by John is taking over the sort of internal separatist republic full of Armenians.

Yeah, Nagorno-Karabakh. Yes. So, Azerbaijan, by the way, repeated war criminal, ethnic cleanser, genocide, terrible on human rights both internally and externally, but strategic NATO ally. So, you know, they're all guys. Yeah, absolutely. Big round of applause for the oil guys.

We love the oil guys. We love, yeah, we love that shit. Because Armenia is in this sort of like really unfavorable position of being nominally a Russian ally, but the Russians both can't and won't intervene at all. They don't give a shit. They don't seem to be super interested. Yeah. Yeah, because Russians love to be racist against people who were formally in the USSR. Essentially, what happened is after they invaded Ukraine, a bunch of the sort of like younger Russians who did not want to fight a new grain just kind of got dumped into Armenia as

a kind of like a care situation. And so now everything in Armenia costs like $50,000 because it's being bought by like Russian fail sons, whoever unhates. But also, they will not lift a finger about any of this because, you know, they're tied up in Ukraine and also they don't want to. So there's Russian peacekeeping forces there that are peacekeeping, but ultimately what we're seeing is like this mass displacement, this mass ethnic cleansing of Armenians

into Armenia out of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is just being, as a by-genified, you know, they're taking down all the signs, renaming all the towns, and it's real bad, and no one seems to give you much of a shit. Yeah, no one seems to want to do anything about this considering. It seems part of it has been pretty embarrassing on this. You know, you start, you sort of look at it and you're like, well, they're there, but they're there's objectively someone in the wrong here. Can we do something of no? Not going to do that. And I mean, it will be lucky if it ends here because as a Yeah, because Azerbaijan sort of like anti-Armenian rhetoric and posturing and then, you know, actions leading up to war, extend way beyond the Goma Karabakh and they're like, wherever

this leads, it's not going to be good. And Armenia has sort of like very little in the way of like any ability to defend itself from a much more aggressive neighbor. Which again is like this our guy is like our allies, nominally. Take over Armenia and then they take over Georgia and then they go steamroll right into Iran. That tweet from like a couple of years ago that said that a USSR two was brewing was right. It was just a. It was just as your body.

No, no, USSR to capital back. Yeah. So I started when they got the Grand Prix. That was a bad decision. Yeah, genuinely. Like, I mean, we sports watch the fuck out of it. Yeah. MBS is not stopping his sports watching either.

As he said, still doing the Saudi pro league and stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that's bad. Bad to do more Armenian genocides. Yeah, you would think was was the one not enough for you. In other news. Yeah.

Now this this one I have not been following to closely. So basically what happened was a guy named Eddie Erisari was shot in his car by a cop now former Philly cop named Mark dial. They couple days ago just missed the murder charges against him. Thankfully, they refiled charges. We've had some unrest and filialy. I have the same speaker this guy the hat has. Cool.

Yeah, right. Yeah, didn't, didn't he like, Pudge himself or like a bunch of cops, Pudge themselves about what was on the body cam footage? It came out pretty quick. Uh, I, I, he got charged with murder. Uh, I'm not sure that there was, we have seen the body cam footage. Basically, he runs at him, says, put your fucking hands up. I'll fucking kill you.

Uh, and then proceed to shoot. Yes. So do just that. Right. Okay. Uh, all Philly cops are bastards. All cops are bastards. Uh, Mark files a cold blood and murder

Like I said they have refiled the murder charges and cops get what they deserve that is my opinion on this and any Irreserie didn't need to die Did not need to be executed for no fucking reason Yeah, it's fucking grotesque and that judge His name is escaping you right now should be deeply ashamed judge Wendy L. P. There we go. Wendy P. Oh, yeah. So basically I I will. Yeah, we haven't done. I'm not sure what the what the plan is reason these are these like protests and stuff.

Obviously, there's been some protests and some looting because obviously, yeah, what's more important than a person dying, being negatively executed in the streets of Philadelphia is iPhones, obviously. Yeah, someone, someone getting an iPhone. Yeah. So I'm not too mad that Lulu Lemon got robbed. Sorry. sorry. The sanctity of Lulu Lemon, the West truly has fallen. But yeah, what even is Lulu Lemon? They say yoga pants. They're like canceled for some abstruse reason I don't remember. Like, it's something really allunitec from what I know.

Yeah, it's like some really deep shit. It's like, it's like, it's like a hobby. It needs people maybe. Yeah, it's like that they, I I don't know they're all made in like Israeli settlement using child labor or something. I don't know. I don't remember what it is but it's like it's bad but it's weird bad is the deal with literally 11. Right okay. That's my vibe update on the yoga pants place is like yeah, it's something going on there, but I don't remember what. So yeah, once again, police just murdered people arbitrarily and get away with it.

How does this keep happening? Says, yeah, only nation. No way to perfectly happen. Yeah, not only nation where this right, get really happens, but like to say, seemingly, the French had the, had the DZ to burn half their country down. Yeah. Yeah. Seemingly only country where this happens as much as it does. Yeah. That was the God damn news. Okay. Let's try and recover our tone here. Give us some nice trains. All right. Yeah. Tell me about the other. There's awesome nice trains. All right, yeah, tell me about the Southern trains. Those are some nice trains. Yeah, so I guess this is where we start,

is to talk about the Southern Pacific's Sunset Limited. And later M-Tracks Sunset Limited, right? So this is, so the Southern Pacific is, was the Southern Transcontinental Railroad, it's why we had to Gads in purchase and all that sort of stuff. You know, it ran from Los Angeles east, right? Sort of through the desert and through San Diego getting owned as we previously covered. Yes.

One of their premier trains is inaugurated in 1894 with the Sunset Limited, which went from New Orleans to Los Angeles and later up to San Francisco. I like it. I like a named train. You hardly ever get them now. I at least Yeah, well good one called the cannonball, which was an L.I.R. R name train. It's still called the cannonball. Oh, I thought they got rid of the named service. I do not believe so. Okay. The thing is you can't get a, a meaningfully named service in this country anymore, like there's slap a name plate on it. And they'll be like, yeah, this is like the Flying Scots or whatever. It won't be on the board because that's still by time. And it's like, well, put a little extra line on that, you know, me some flair. Yeah, you know, it used to be like when all

the M Trek Northeast regionals had names like the Senator or the night owl. Clocker, the night owl. Fuck, that's cool. The fast mail, et cetera. Yeah. So, you know, this goes New Orleans to San Francisco via Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, Phoenix and Los Angeles. And, you know, I had sort of the standard story for American passenger rail. Um, becomes this ridiculous luxury train sort of in, you know, the 30s through the 40s. It starts to decline in the 50s.

Some of that was genuine loss of ridership. Some of that was because the railroad just didn't want to handle passengers. I'm thinking about the kind of like ultimate level decadence you would have to be like, yeah, I'm going to get on a train in Los Angeles and like vacation in New Orleans. I'm gonna be drinking the whole way. Oh, that's the dream, baby. That is the fucking dream. So this is one of the trains that was incorporated into the Mtrex system in 1974 when Mtrex took over all the passenger trains, right? And 1993, they decided, well, we're missing some service along the Gulf Coast here in sort of the Florida Panhandle, right?

What if we extend this train all the way to Miami? And that made it the first actually transcontinental train to run in the United States. What, they never ran like one that was like fully transcontinental before. No, you always changed in Chicago. Big Chicago putting a thumb on the scale for like 200 years. Oh yeah. So, you know, now it was it was very long train, San Francisco to Miami. It gave it these nice new superliner cars that M-Trek bought in the 80s, I want to say. You know, and this was they essentially they combined it with a previous Louisville and Nashville train called the Gulf Wind.

That is not such a good name. That was the New Orleans. That's the New Orleans to Miami segment. Again, I'll try and avoid massive decadent. Oh, yeah. Oh, I would never be so broad that trade. Yes, exactly. Exactly. That's that's that's a cry. I mean, listen, no one ever got killed by like drunk passenger rain, especially on a train. Yeah, I was about to say, you know, it's similar vibes to

like a conductor made rise, not drink his beer on the Northeast regional for some reason. Yeah, they don't like it on a they don't like it on a Richmond regional. So this was trinicated to Orlando in 1997. And after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, they just decided, I will get rid of the entire Gulf Coast segment again. It'll be back to the original one. Yeah, we're doing the Katrina. Yeah, we're doing the Katrina. Yeah, the thing about doing the Katrina episode is that it's going to be 17 hours long and we're going to ed it's going to have to require each of us doing like a doctoral thesis for the research because like I mean part of it is just you can into it from this map a little bit like this also one of the country just did not recover like yeah.

Right. I've been to New Orleans several times since Katrina, obviously, and there are parts that are still like abandoned, I guess you'd use the word just abandon. I mean, recognize on ignorance when I said the Libya had the first SAC to be destroyed by climate change in recent America. It's not true in New Orleans was like, I mean, they've done their best to rebuild it, but yeah, they're, you know, I've been on tours with their just like, yeah, like just no one came and helped. And they do just left us to die. Hey, yeah, you see a lot of houses that still have tarps on the roof, although I assume those have been from more recent hurricanes than Katrina by and large.

Yeah, on the hurricane. I'm not stuck in a period of time. The episode is coming. Stop emailing me about it. Definitely, definitely parts of the city that are recovered better than other parts. Yeah, I still don't have a public school system. I thought, yeah, I think the other thing is we're trying to finesse the ability to do like a comedy podcast that allows about Katrina that allows us to go to New Orleans without getting like Sazaracks thrown off faces.

Getting getting getting, yeah, that would be bad. That would be bad. would be bad on the other Yeah, I want the size of X or any way face but like the mouth, you know, yeah I prefer not to be marched to the streets all up no more good offy This is this train is theoretically being restored sometime in the near future I know they do want to run a new Orleans to mobile train But on the new M-track expansion maps, this is always confusingly labeled service suspended as though it's still going to be suspended after

all this investment. I don't understand. Just one train. It's like a really long dinky. Yeah. So this is another, this is also one of the two three times a week trains on the M-track network, the other one being the cardinal. That's a cool name.

Yeah. So anyway, that's the song of the E3s with a little like cardinals bit at on this op event. Oh, hell yeah. So now we got to talk about Mobile Alabama and the Mobile River. Oh, boy. So the port of Mobile is pretty big port and on the Gulf Coast. It's the testing the limits of my knowledge here. My knowledge of the port of mobile is they

sent the like BPD's surveillance van there one time in season two of the wire. I don't know very much about mobile. It's kind of, it's, it's, it's not a word or the eras, we're sorry. Yeah, exactly. Well, actually, Ross isn't, is the worst thing from the south of the base of Dixon. I am from Virginia, yes. Virginia is taking Alabama's for granted. I mean, impossible. You know, this is the last time this happened was a. I wasn't, I mean, listen, I think it's fine if you tell them to fix bayonets and charge up hell into the guns, you know Yeah, hey, that's my state baby So mobile is an important port not just for ocean-going vessels, but for river river boats

Barges so on and so forth, right? This is on account of, you know, where you're, just at the dumbest fucking joke in my head. But here, born Justin Rosniak, he adopted the nickname Mark Twain from Riverboat Slang. Yes. So, um, you know, this uh, the mobile river eventually becomes the Tom Bagee River. Um, that was big for shipping traffic for a while, but it didn't get really big until they built

something that will cause certain people to just start fuming about wasteful government investment, which is the Tennessee Tom Bighay Waterway, which linked the Tom Bighay River with the Tennessee River and thus into the Mississippi River system as a whole, right? Yeah, I mean, this is like one of the most engineered river systems, like in the world, right? The whole like low Mississippi.

Yeah, I mean, you know, other than like some of those big shipping rivers in Europe, like the Danube, you know, shit to the Danube, they barely like scraped all the like Nazi skulls out of it like Very generalized official reef but made out of Nazi skulls and inner I think it's been straightened a bunch of times too. I'm sure Sippy's also been straight into number of times And yeah, those are hard. I just reversed. No, I don't do conversion therapy. Don't say bye. You beat me to the joke So Ross quitsy protests. Yeah. After this, after this canal is opened in the 1980s,

there's a lot more barge traffic, right? This becomes much busier. You know, you get, they're shipping cargo like wood, wood products, petroleum products, coal, all this stuff that's like steel, you know, cheap and durable enough to travel for weeks by barge. And then it goes into the port of mobile. And if it's destined for somewhere farther out, like it goes on to a bigger boat and goes out into a gulf and into the ocean, right? You know, to wherever they want to go. Another

thing they have here is they got a really big railroad terminal. A, serving the port B, there's a car float that goes from mobile to Coetza Koalcus, which I'm sure I pronounced wrong. And we're gonna have to talk a lot about it a lot more in an upcoming episode, so yeah. But that's another episode. Yes, it is. And this is all on sort of a delta, right? The FBI coming for you, Liam. That's it. That was me. Yeah. So, you know, probably not

wrong, honestly. Like, if I get executed by the FBI, I just keep going. Yeah. So all of this is like a big swamp, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look at all that beautiful brown on the satellite. And this is like a turquoise felt tip marker kind of color. Oh, yeah, yeah, you get the whole whole, uh, the whole right side of it. Flying phrase riverfront industrial area. I don't like that. Yeah, that's. Sue Poludies mega factory. Yeah. Yeah.

There's a town called Pennsylvania. Oh, don't go there. Wait, there's a town called Bromley. Fuck me. That's that's the, I don't, I, that's one of the places I least want to go in the world after Bromley London is Bromley, Alabama. Alabama. Yeah, yeah. I think the leads. So there's a lot of swamps and there's a lot of

bayos, right? Which is French for swamp. Yes. But in general, when you talk about bayos in this context, there's sort of open channels within the swamp. Some are big enough for barge traffic, some are not. Some could be made big enough for barge traffic, but are not as a sewage to them. Yeah, if you dredge to them, they used to do a lot of logging in the swamp, so you'd go and you'd actually dredge new channels into the swamp so you could get at the trees. You know, that's why if you look at like Southern Louisiana and places like that, you see a lot of these inexplicable straight channels that go nowhere. A lot of that's old logging operations.

Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah. I never knew that. So one that was natural was the big bayou cano. You were big by a can or a big buy you can know? Yes. So you'll get to that in a second though, because I probably should have put this slide one further. Anyway, when you're navigating barges on the Mississippi River system, right?

Usually you have several of these big barges that are standardized size, and you just sort of lash them together and you get a big tugboat and you push them. That looks a bit like you don't have anything at the front, it's all stared and hollered at the back. What are you going to hit? Aligaysa. Aligaysa. Floridian and Abbo. Aligaytar is smart enough to get out of the way. The Floridian and the airboat. Yeah, the alligator smart enough to get out of the way. The Floridian, I don't know.

I could get it. It's better so your skulls. I don't. Yeah. Bunch of Andrew Jackson's old canes. I don't know like I know my rights. I know my rights. I'm being by a gator.

You're not going very fast. You know, there's a lot of time to react. You know, you these things take. These things take weeks and weeks to go very short distances. You can become a grace American man of lessons in the course of driving one of these. Exactly. But it's very good for a really big bulky cargo like, you know, coal or stuff like that, right? As long as it's something that doesn't go bad. Now, so navigation on this river system used to be a very difficult and then sort of in the later 1800s, they started installing systems to make it easier like lighting. The whole Mississippi river was lit up for a long time.

I don't think it is anymore because we invented radar. And that makes it very easy to navigate even in very difficult conditions. So it used to be difficult. How difficult do the conditions get? This is my question. Not very for a large. Yeah, it looks pretty flat. Yeah, it's pretty flat, pretty slow. If you're in a flood, that would be pretty bad But then you're probably just gonna scope tide the barges off somewhere No, I'm not gonna go through New York. Yeah, rather than yeah, rather than Yeah, rather than

Accidentally deliver the barge directly downtown Trying to back up in time square with your barge. downtown. I'm trying to back up in timescare with your barge. Yeah, I've seen the day I've barged out. Yeah, the worst stuff you can get is, you know, really heavy fog or it's just pitch black out. But again, you have radar now, so that's not as big of a problem. And a lot of times, even if there is very heavy fog, what do you do? You go over the side of the river with your barges and you throw

a rope around a tree and you wait for the weather to improve. I was hoping you were gonna say like epic tactical barge captain like full-cheven night vision goggles. I mean back in the day though what this used to be was you had a guy with a like a stick right the proverbial barge pole like a stick, right? The proverbial bulge pole. And you just kind of like felt ahead stuff. Or you would just stop when it got dark or it was foggy. Yeah. Ultimately, that was like the the main thing you did. Now, in the Delta, the mobile river though, there's there are some navigational issues that being there's a lot of extra channels, and by use, it's easy to get lost to take a wrong turn if you aren't experienced

in navigating the river. You are doing the like 3.10 in a bio or whatever, you know, back in the thing up, back in the thing up again. So here's the main channel, the mobile river is here. I like this image. Right. Looks like this image. Right. Looks like I'm vascular. Is that the one I'm looking for?

Looks like you have a lot of vascular. Like a lot of vascular. That work of capillaries and all that. Yeah, yeah. And then the big bayou cano branches off here. Are you a big bayou? It goes round and over and over and around and back up. That really is a big bayou cano.

Yeah, got this. And then you notice a straight line here. This was the Lewisville and Nashville Railroad, which is now owned by CSX. I assume horrific shape and it is currently it wasn't at the time. Yeah, because this is now like a lost technology maintaining a railroad through this one. I mean, just trying to do really basic maintenance. Well, I don't know if CSX is telling the truth about all this stuff, no, the condition of the railroad down there, because they don't want,

they don't want M-track to come back. But they say it's not in good shape, I believe. Considering the stuff that they say is in good shape, that's not like a ringing endorsement. So this Bayou was never navigable, but for whatever reason when the Louisville and Nashville rebuilt the bridge in 1909, they built this bridge which had a trust section, then it had at the other end, it had a timber trussle, and in the middle, they built the steel girder bridge with a central support because they wanted to eventually convert it into a swing bridge. You know, so I can rotate out of the way so a tugboat can get past, right?

Just in case someone like straightens it. Yeah. In case someone straightens the channel, they want to do some logging back there. There's some other reason to bring stuff. I don't know exactly why. For some time, I'd need it. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, but they thought they might need it, right?

Yeah. So what this means is you built the bridge, which is not very resistant to shear forces, like a force that acts on it from the side because it's designed to rotate, right? Sure. That's fine. I mean, you don't get any wind or shit down there. Like it's, yeah, exactly. You know, it's, it's heavy enough that a hurricane's not going to do much to it. Oh, okay. Unless it's like, I don't know, category. Like the bean. Where is this going to be fucked no matter what, sure.

Yeah, exactly. It's something that's going to level the entire county. We did it, Patrick. We saved the bridge. Yeah. And this bridge was in use basically forever. And at the time of our story, in this 1993, it's owned by CSX.

M-track uses it. it's in pretty good shape. This was pretty good track. It was 70 mile an hour track at the time. Again, I don't know what the state of it is now. And it's costing through a swamp at 70 miles an hour. Oh yeah, well, that's very straight and very flat. You know, once you built that good in bank, when you're basically, you know, you can go anywhere you want.

It's like a controlled environment. Yeah. Cool. So maybe we have a, a briefer here on railroad signaling systems and how track is done. So you're allowed these sorts of speeds, right? Um, I think most of our listeners have a basic understanding of railroad signals. Yeah. Green means go.

Green means go. Green means go. Green means go. Green means go. green means go. Green means go. Yeah, it means stop a bit a bit. Yeah, this guy down here on the bottom right is like fuck this railroad and has just set a bunch of it on fire, which I think is rude. Yeah. Um, so the way railroad signals work is, yeah, they give you directions how to operate the train. Do you go, do you stop? You go slower? You stop and proceed, I all kinds of stuff, right? You divide the rail up into blocks. If the block has a train in it or the thing doesn't work, then it's not. It can only have one train in it at a time. Yes. So how does the signal know what

aspect is play? Aspect being the color. I mean, back in the day, you did it with like weights and like wires and shit. And now I assume it's you could go on the computer. The signal codes are transmitted from signal to signal through the rails. That's fucking sick. Huh. Yeah. This way. No. Yeah.

So this is how modern signals can not only, you know, they can relay information to each other, but they also can detect based on the resistance whether a train is in the block or not. That's so cool. Yeah. I guess also if you just lost a bunch of track or something because it breaks the circuit. Yeah. So if the track, if the rails break, the signal goes red.

That's smart. That's a good thing. It's fail safe. Now another thing that was invented much more recently than this sort of signaling system is something called continuous welded rail, right? So the idea of continuous welded rail is that, okay, previously you had jointed rail, right? It came in, I want to say 40-foot segments.

Yeah, we've talked about this before. When we were talking about like the switch from like iron rails to steel rails, and it's like this is like this sort of technical like up a bound on how long you can make a rail section and have it still be like straight and strong. Oh, yeah. And we've been making up longer and longer. You know, your old fashioned jointed rail, you know, you had to join every 40 feet or so and that's what gave the train the clicky clacks down and it was, you know, also, you know, is a little rougher of a ride than what you can get with this new continuous welded rail where the idea is it comes in in this quarter mile long segment. You just put on a bunch of flat cars strung together and then you lay it down in those quarter mile segments and then you weld several of those segments together and you get an even longer rail. And then all this gives you a very smooth ride,

reduces wear on the rails, it reduces wear on the rolling stack, all that kinds of stuff, right? But it takes away the cool noise. It does take away the cool noise. And just I'm just realizing with horror that I haven't heard the cool noise in like most of my life now. Well, there's still two places on the Mtrex system, Unic Unixperience, which is on the

Cardinal, South of Charlottesville, where it goes on the Buckingham branch railroad and on the Anorondek, the Montreal, where once it crosses the border, it goes on to the worst track in North America. You know, it's dead straight all the way into Montreal, but it's still a 30 mile an hour speed limit. And it's a rough 30 miles an hour. And it's a rough 30 miles an hour. That's what it is. So yeah, we have large sections of the American Rail Network have been converted to continuously welded rail. You know, it has a lot of advantages over joining rail.

It's got a longer life. There are problems with expansion and contraction, but those are largely solved with, you know, expansion joints. And you know, you can just engineer for expected temperatures and tolerances. And if you're having a really bad day and the rails are really trying to shrink on you, what do you can do is set the track on fire? Oh yeah, yeah.

Yeah, fuck this railroad. Exactly. And that'll usually give you a little leeway for the rail to expand more. Oh yeah. They like to do this in Chicago. A lot of that's for switches. But some of it is, you know, rail expansion and contraction.

Hey, let's go. I think this is a worthy Chicago tradition. Yes. So, okay, we have all of us in mind. We have barges. We have a railroad made of continuously welded rail through a swamp. It goes over a swing bridge with a continuously-welded rail over it because the swing bridge doesn't need to swing. Sure, makes sense to me. Hi, it's Justin. So this is a commercial for the podcast that you're already listening to. People are annoyed by these, so let me get to the point. We have this thing called Patreon, right? The deal is you give us two bucks a month

and we give you an extra episode once a month. Sometimes it's a little inconsistent, but you know, it's two bucks to get what you pay for. It also gets you our full back catalog of bonus episodes so you can learn about exciting topics like guns, pickup trucks, or pickup trucks with guns on them. The money we raise through Patreon goes to making sure that the only ad you hear on this podcast is this one.

Anyway, that's something to consider if you have two bucks to spare each month. Join at patreon.com forward slash WTYP pod. Do it if you want or don't. It's your decision and we respect that back to the show. All right. So it's September 21st, 1993. Oh, yeah, I was about to say this seems like idiot proof. Like, I know it. I know about to say this seems like idiot proof. Like I know it way.

Yes, well, don't worry. Also, we're here. So how could it be idiot? Yeah. So will he see Odom? Odom? Yeah, I know. He was piloting a barge or a tugboat called the M.V. Mauville, or Mavila. They were going to be Alan Biamond's rising and decide that you are giving every single word here about five too many syllables for them. I imagine so. Yeah. This was owned by Warrior and Gulf Navigation Company. He was going upstream. Yeah. He was going upstream on the mobile river with six barges. was going upstream on the mobile river with six barges. Mobile. Excuse me, respectful mobile.

The mobile river. The mobile river. Yes. Says, waving around. Yeah. So I was very late. And there was a fog rolling in as he started to pass 12 mile island, which is this guy here. The cousin of three mile island.

That's actually four or three mile islands. I, yeah, I. The cousin is three mile island. It's actually four three mile islands. Yeah, I was just calling it cousins, Ross. That's full times larger cousin. Yeah. So other crews had radioed in and he heard that the okay upstream, this fog is a shut out, right? There's no visibility. So Adam decided to do the smart thing.

He's going to more of the tugboat in barges to a tree. So, he and a deck hand spent about 15 minutes trying to find a suitable tree, and they fail miserably at it. They don't find the tree. They can't find any tree. Just black out fog, not black out fog, and they can't find a good tree to more to.

You know, because he had to use any tree. You need a pretty good tree. Right. The sort of long tail consequences of deforestation. Exactly. So now during that 15 minutes they spent doing that, he's been distracted and has not really been navigating, right? Wow.

Cool. I mean, it's a slow boat. It's fine. Very slow. Yeah. Now, Odom had also never had formal training in the use of radar. He had learned it on the job.

Okay. Oh, yeah. That's not a great mix of like subject, master, and sort of like, yeah, you come to the right. Yeah. Radar is one of those things you would sort of be like, oh, okay, like we're going to at least sit you down for a few minutes.

Yeah. Yeah. It would be like a homegrown radar. Yeah. Well, worse, the Mavela had a new model of radar he hadn't previously used. Cool. Okay. The company also had neglected to provide him with a compass.

What that seems like too much cost. He had furthermore left his river charts at home that day No, just now you just You're a fucking bad man dude I was mostly on this guy's side like I you know how we hate to blame it on like an individual And particularly a worker and then I'm I'm listening to this unlike for fuck's sake Come on come on dude You can buy a compass even they don't cost a lot of money.

Like, yeah. The discussion is where do you buy a compass? Like an outdoor store, like a Hollywood movie. Like an outdoor store, yeah. Yeah, I guess. Ross. So since he did not find a good tree, he decided the course of action was to continue up the river

about three miles to where he knew for a fact there was a good tree that he could tie the barges to. Well, just on like knowledge and belief. Like yeah, he'd been up there spopping down the river several times. It's like this is where the good tree is. You know, did the ever occur to anybody So like maybe professionalized this a little bit. No, no. Okay. Event will get to that. Roll tide. Yeah.

Roll. Yeah. Roll tide. Roll. Now, so at this point, the fog is so thick, he can't see the front of the barges. And Odom has no idea that what he's done is at the end of 12 mile island, he had not continued down the river. He had turned into the big bayou canal.

Uh, uh, you missed your turning. Yeah. I looks like I took a wrong turn in Albuquerque. It's just like gonna kill 40 people. So it's about 245 in the morning. Those are the front door doorbell. Those are the front doorbell. Someone's at the front door doorbell.

Very, very compelling phrase. Yeah. All right. Oh, the, the staff. Yeah, probably. Yeah. Well, I'll, I'll see you guys later. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I am a pleasure. Well, I mean, it was, it was nice on them. So finally on a radar, he sees what he thinks is another barge tell, which is more perpendicularly across the river, right? Sounds sort of like inconsiderate. A compound. Yeah. Apparently, it sometimes happens, you know, in poor visibility conditions.

You can't get too tight. You can't get too tight. So off on a tree, it goes sideways. Exactly. in poor visibility conditions. You can't get too tight. You can't get too tight. So off on a tree, it goes sideways, exactly. So he's like, okay, what if we just tie our barges to his barges? It tries to contact them on a radio. He gets no response.

And he's like, I'll just do it anyway. So I slowly plotting up to this unknown toe and thunk. And the big problem. I mean, they got like toe tires over the side and shit. Exactly. It's fine. If you do a little thunk, it's a large hole or whatever. What are you going to do? You're going to the coal. Yeah, exactly. It's not going to, you're not going to damage the coal. Now, once again, okay, he thinks he's more, he's, he's, he's got a, got something to more to here, right?

Um, but what the Mowville actually funked into was not a, another, a barge toe, right? It was the big buy you can know railroad bridge. So for a couple of minutes, he was trying to call a bridge on the right. He was trying to call a bridge on a radio. That's like the old joke about the fucking like lighthouse. The lighthouse and the Navy ship. Yeah. So since he struck the girder section that was designed to eventually be a swing bridge,

uh-oh. He swung a whole thing out about three feet. He made it into a swing bridge. He caused it to swing. Yes. You can lash really like a Gerrard. He was a real urbanist. Yeah. He made the thing a swing bridge. He caused it to swing. Yes. You can lash really like a gorilla. Yeah. He opened his ear.

He made the thing a swing bridge. So this was enough of a swing to throw the girder directly into the path of the rail road, but not enough to break the rails. Ooh, twisty rail. Yeah, exactly. The rail is like, the line is like fouled, but it's not broken. It's not broken, so you don't have an automatic indication in heavy fog.

Yes, in the middle of the night. Ooh, yeah, buddy. Now, while this was happening, train number two, the Eastbound Sunset Limited was just leaving mobile. Because like many M-track trains has very convenient departure times in major cities. Like, like, like, 245 in the morning.

What's leaving mobile, you have this long, flat, straight section of track, quickly reach the maximum authorized speed to 70 miles an hour. There had been a 30 minute delay owing to a problem with a toilet at mobile. This is also a three-day long train. So, you know, whatever, 30 minutes that will make that back up. So, yeah, Odom is, you know, he's he's trying to, you know, get something to tie on to here and he can't quite do it. About eight

minutes after he heard the thunk, he hears this, here's this whooshing noise. And then suddenly there seemed to be some kind of fire on the bank, right? And he like bandages to maneuver the barges away from whatever he thunked into. And while he's doing that, he loses one of them. This is genuinely the most clueless motherfucker

we've ever spoken about. This whole thing happens and he's like oblivious to it. There's no idea what's going on. I don't know. I just want to stop the barges. And I guess we're in like a task oriented right? One of them is now just merrily drifting its way down a river out to the Gulf. Well, whoosh ignoise turned out to be Eastbound train number two.

The Sun said limited. After passing, yeah, after passing a clear signal at the Bayou Sarah bridge, locomotive number 819, which is a brand new P40 DC. It's one of the stereotypical M track diesels you see everywhere. Same shape at least. Yeah. Yeah. First day on the job. Yeah, exactly. It crashed directly into the girder, climbed over it, and hurtled itself off the end of the bridge, which then collapsed. Yeah. It buried itself 46 feet deep down in the mud. Oh, I hate the Mississippi. I hate the swamps. Less than the caves. I hate the swamps.

Oh, the worst of the caves. Oh, yeah. Three engineers inside were killed instantly. Please. So I mean, better than like mud drowning. 46 feet of mud. Well, I was, uh, the investigation investigation said blunt force trauma and this fixation. No. Exactly. Not good. Not good. Not good. The other two locomotives behind it also went into the swamp as did the baggage car. The dormitory coach car, which has some seats and some crew quarters in it, and two of the coaches behind it.

So like coach 34, 0, 6, 8, which was the fourth car in the train, went into Bayou, almost completely submerged in the water. Yeah. Yeah, you're just having a nice time on the thing. You've just gotten on the train at like two in the morning. Next thing you know, you under like infinity mud. Good glute, nice. Exactly. Another coach was partially submerged.

That was 34,083. That's the one that's like half sticking out of the water. Both of these flooded very quickly, especially if you're on the lower floor, just instantly full of water. Yeah. The remaining four cars, the train, jolted to a halt on the bridge, which is still pretty fucking precarious, given that the bridge is falling down. Yes. Yes. One of them was partially off the end of the truss. Yeah. All of this is happening. You got to remember, this is the middle of the night.

Lots of passengers are asleep either in the coaches or in the sleeping car. All of them suddenly jolted awake by this deceleration, right? There's no, but there's been no indication of any kind of emergency that was going to happen. You know, the engineer wasn't sat in a horn or did any emergency braking or anything like that. So it was up to the remaining crew to figure out what the hell was going on.

Yeah, no one's in it is just like just driving along and then instant mud death. Instant mud death. Yeah. And then, you know, the, you know, there's very heavy fog. It's the middle of the night. No one knows where they are. Right. The only people who would know where they were are buried in a locomotive. You're having like a sort of like a D-Day minus one power trooper experience.

Right. And just caught in a tray, right? The worst biome. Dick Witters is not coming to help you though. Yeah. Most of the crew was in coach dormitory, 3308, or 339908, which is one of the first cars to go in the bio. This one suffered some structural damage,

but it didn't actually, wasn't really submerged, right? Yeah, so they're fine. No, because it was on fire. Which fucking Elmaphod on the barge sort of abstractly notices. Yeah, yeah, so it, it, it, one of the things that happens very quickly is that the fuel tanks for the locomotive rupture and they catch on fire and now there's just flaming diesel all around this wreck in the, in the swamp, in the bio. So So if you if you evacuated from the sinking railroad cars, if you were one of the lucky people who managed to, quite a few people did,

suddenly you were swimming in the bio surrounded by a fiery oil slick. I'll just the flat drives back the gays says maybe. Yeah, I said that was a larger. Yeah. Yeah. So that's about three in the morning. You're one of the two crew who are back in the diner. You got to figure out. I'm telling you that right now. Figure out what you're going to do. You got to figure out what happened and you got to coordinate an evacuation.

And they had a big issue, which is they didn't know where they were. Right. It's also whenever dead of night can't see things are on fire. Yeah. And of course, no cell phones. The roro fairy that went down and that. Oh yeah. Yeah. So I had a free enterprise. No, I was to give a study. I wasn't on. Oh yeah, yeah, I was on vacation. Yeah. So the assistant conductor made a made a call on a radio around 256 because of the way the radio was working that day. In this area, there's no like realize station, right? So it had to be relayed by the way, by way of a following CSX freight train who then

rated up silver yard and mobile, and they had the telephone the emergency services who then rated up Silveryard and Mobile and they had the telephone the emergency services who then telephoned the Coast Guard whose number was wrong in the Mobile phone book. Nice. Yeah, so they couldn't get a hold of the Coast Guard for quite a while. It was a very slow process in the situation that was rapidly worsening. There's a lot of people in the water. The water was on fire. No one knew where they were. And of course, there were gators. Oh, you motherfuckers. But why not? Everything's on fire.

Yeah. Yeah. I have a nice friendly gators here to help you. I guess this is sort of the situation like if you're in a restaurant and you see someone like getting delivered like table sides and like sizzling fajitas or something. That's same vibe, but for me, you order Jesus. Yeah. It's like, interesting. So, all right. How many people got eaten by gasses? Actually, no one got eaten by gators. The gators were present though. Yeah, that we know of This was a silent jury here. Yeah, so that the captain of the Malvillea had woken up from the thunk and the whoosh He took the helm from William Odom

He also called him Mayday because he had lost one of the barges Again now happily floating down the mobile river and he didn't know where he was If Jesus crossed again now, happily floating down the mobile river and he didn't know where he was. Jesus Christ. So he radio the Coast Guard and the Coast Guard established that the Coast Guard didn't know where he was and he didn't know where he was and they also didn't know where the train wreck was which happened suspiciously soon afterwards

but they did figure out that they were close to the train wreck. Yeah, I suppose that's technically true, isn't it? But they did figure out that they were close to the train wreck. Yeah. I suppose that's technically true, isn't it? And it's a lost person to see him alive sort of way. The barge knows where it is because it knows where it isn't. So they decide to go help with the rescue effort for this accident they just caused. The Mowilla was the first on the scene. They essentially they just cut the barges and beached them. And you know, then they came back to the scene of the accident. They pulled about 16 people out

of the water, including everyone who survived the wreck in the crew dorm coach. Now the Coast Guard was en route to the wrong bridge. Oh yeah, baby. Yeah, because they all thought it was the 14 mile bridge, which is a little farther up on actually on a river. Um, another tugboat showed up on the scene. This was the Scott pride. They pulled 20 people out of the water. And it was about 4 a.m. when the Coast Guard finally figured out they went to the wrong bridge. They turned around and showed up. And it's about 4 a.m. when the Coast Guard finally figured out they went to the wrong bridge, they turned around and showed up. And that was also when a fireboat finally showed up. So the meantime, the conductors and the onboard staff had coordinated a human chain in the water to help people to safety on the banks of the bay.

So did you say human chain? A human chain centipede. Right. Yeah. I, I don't, I don't like that very much. Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna, I gotta go, gotta go haul people out of the gator, confessed waters that are also on fire. Right. Yeah. Don't like that. So everyone here is their cold, their wet, their miserable, a lot of them are injured. If you coach, I just go stamp by the fire. Wow. That's a good point.

Well, I'm pretty good to meet go stamp by the fire. Well, that's a good point. Well, it's a pretty good time. When the fire about arrived, they got rid of the fire. Oh, yeah. And then that sort of, you know, makes your wet problem worse. Because one of the primary ways of defeating fire is with wet. With wet, yes.

With wet, yes. You know, so stuff was on fire. People were dead, it stuff was on fire. People were dead. It was a big mess. And they didn't, they still didn't really know where they were. He can't fuck around with fog. Like we haven't done a sort of like fog based aviation disaster yet, but that's, there's so many of them.

Oh, yeah. Until we had GPS, like reliable GPS and, you know, if Elon starts the fucking Kessler syndrome, it will be like this again. Yeah, if there's fog, I don't know. I guess, I guess. Fuck. Yeah. But eventually, everyone figures out they're not at the 14 mile bridge. They're not at the bayou Sarah bridge. They're at the big bayou. You can have a fire, right? Yeah.

You gotta go to the fire. Which led to this new fun problem. How do they evacuate the injured passengers? Hospital train. Yes. That's what they wind up having. Yeah. Yeah.

Put a couple of like blue lights on the top of another P4C. Yeah, because I think they just didn't have enough capacity on the tugboats. So the tugboats went down river. It would have taken too long to send more boats up the river. So they managed to get, yeah, they managed to get a second train all the way from New Orleans, which takes an agonizingly long time, because there's no road. The boats are slow. So yeah, the only thing you can do is send another train. It literally sending in more trains. I'm sending in more trains. Yeah. People had to have their wounds bandaged

using scraps of tablecloth from the dining car. Oh, wounds, which by the way, have been this greenhouse water. Yeah, exactly. They've been contaminated with horrible swamp water filled with diesel. Um, yeah, and that's before the Amtrak had it. Exactly. The last survivors didn't make it to a hospital or triage site until 830 in the morning.

That's a rough night. That's a long, long, long night. Yeah. Like, it's not quite up there with like a plane dumping you onto a glacier or something, but like it's still, yeah, that's like a wilderness survival situation, you know? Exactly, exactly, you know, and it's like, okay, I mean, you know, obviously there's no electricity in the train anymore, you know, so you can't really, there's no way to go to warm up or anything. It's just miserable.

I mean, granted, okay, it's Alabama in late September, it's not that cold, but it's certainly not warm. Yeah. Plus, you know what really makes you feel cold a lot more as a shock? Yes. So I'll tell 47 people were dead in 111 injured in this wreck.

Most of the dead were from drowning inside this submerged rail cars. Well, there weren't too many serious injuries. This was sort of something where either you lived or you died. Do we know how many people like died waiting for rescue? Because that seems like a do not believe anyone died waiting for a rescue. Hey, that's that's you know, the huge endorsement of the Amtrak dining car tablecloth. Exactly. Yeah. They had a bunch of trouble accounting for everyone though. Since Amtrak didn't

keep accurate records of who was on the train, there's a bunch of people pre-terrorism days when you could just do fucking whatever, you know. Yeah, exactly. They had a bunch of, a bunch of infants with no tickets and there were some passengers who boarded and intended to buy a ticket on the train. Yeah, they had a lot of hidden books, style stillways. Yeah, you got a bunch of hobos on the back. You got a bunch of the hobo car, you know, traditional hobo car. Yeah. So this accident was very bad. And course the real question is, all right, who do you blame for this? Look at one guy. You can have one guy.

Well, the NTSB actually looked at a lot more than one guy. Ultimately, discovered something that now seems surprisingly obvious. The cause of the accident was the barges hit the bridge and knocked it out of alignment. That will do it. It took him a long time to figure that one out. Oh, he really got to like cross the teeth and belt the eyes, you know. Yeah.

And the NTSB, they went hard in on warrior and golf navigation. The company hadn't provided proper training or adequate navigational equipment. Well, I, this is a little much. Yeah. They also weren't required to. There was almost no federal oversight

of river navigation. Amazing. It was more, you know, tradition oriented. This is the way we've always done it. Yeah, the last guy to care about this stuff was mocked, right? Exactly. The warrior and golf navigation simply thought, you know, folks are going to learn this on the job. That'll be fine. What's the worst that could happen, you know? Which this apparently, yeah. No one person was blamed for the accident.

No one saw criminal charges. But will he owe them never piloted a tugboat again? That doesn't seem like enough consequent. I'm not usually like a sender guy to jail sort of woman, but like, you lost your tugboat license and you're like, your burgeoning career is like a tugboat. That's like, I think they didn't even take his license from him, he willingly surrendered it.

Oh, yeah. Also, NTSB recommended M-Track make more safety announcements because people didn't know where the emergency exit windows were. Probably could have probably could have saved some lives that way. Yeah, sort of emergency announcement that's like by the way you may be under 46 feet of mud, it like with no warning. Yeah, exactly. Do this. Do this. Do this.

Up in the window, so the mud comes in faster. Yeah. Try to eat as much of the mud as you can. Yeah, exactly. Mud and gators. Rolls-Horries. Use a gator to dig yourself out like a shovel. You know, you want to grab the, sort of a,

grab the, sort of a Fred Flintstone thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And that doesn't even cover one of the locomotives they destroyed. Yeah, I'm trying to say shit on this one. I'm trying to be a shit on this one. Yeah, CSX. I said shit on this one because it was that bridge. It was their bridge. Yeah, they fixed it very, very quickly though. That was back up and good for traffic in like a week.

Wow. Yeah. CSX needs its money. They can move fast when they want to. Right. Of course. The actual litigation here didn't conclude until something like 2016. And for some reason, it was really hard to find information on it. I tried.

I couldn't really figure out exactly what the consequences were. Well, I mean, what have we learned other than do not attempt to become like a self-taught radar operator? than do not attempt to become like a self-taught radar operator. Yeah, it's a good thing for river pilots to have training and licensing. To know which river they're on, apart from one of the else. No, what river you're on. Yeah, I think the thing is, right. If you lie on your CV, sometimes a lot of times,

that's not only moral, but basically consequence-free. If you go for a job as... It's like a job, right. Yeah, well, I was thinking, if you go for a job as a waitress, and you're like, I am familiar with points of sale systems. I have two years of experience doing this. Then they give you the job and you rock up and you go, that was a lie. I don't. Please show me how to use this. They're going gonna show you how to use the thing. It's gonna be okay.

Like nobody's gonna die probably from you doing this. You would have to work very hard to kill 47 people with one of those like the OS systems, right? But like with the radar, kind of not so much, you know? Yeah, when you're piloting a massive heavy arch toe, that's a good way to accidentally bump into things and cause real big problems. Now there's some questions as to if this bridge had not been designed as a swing bridge, would this accident have occurred? Probably not to the same degree of severity, but who knows?

Yeah, but you can't really fault them for building it that way because, you know, what if they needed to straighten the... I am, you know. I'd have to do some logging, yeah. Yeah. What if you wanted to like, you know, hasten our inevitable demise at the hands of... Go. Antropeogenic climate change.

Harvest some gators. Yeah. Yeah. Cut down some more trees so that pilots have fewer places to tie their barges to. Yeah, I think that is the moral of the story is you need bigger, stronger trees. Yeah. Or like anchorages or something, just in source and like anchorages. Brick by the lighting too, you know. Yeah. Why not? Yeah, may as well. Meantime, I'm just imagining this guy being cashiered from like Riverboat service, like they like break his spurs and like snap his sword and stuff. Turn in your badge, you know. I mean, it's not about him. He may well have both of those to do this.

Yeah. That's true. Yeah. I like how they, this is my favorite facet of American culture. Sometimes they'll just give you a badge of being friends with the cops. Like, uh, it's true. Yeah, I like how they this is my favorite facet of American culture. Sometimes they'll just give you a badge for being friends with the cops like Who's the hush awoke? I want to say we just like was an honorary sheriff's deputy and like flash the badge on stage Yeah, that's first of all nice. Yeah, well anyway, that was Big-by-you-can-o disaster We was segment on this podcast called safety third. Shake hands for danger. Hi, Roz Alice and yay, Liam.

Now to I only just came across your podcast this year. And if thoroughly enjoyed the lengthy discussions you all have someone gets it. Someone is bugging us to fucking get to the point in the first half hour of the show. At some point, I do need to sit down and actually look at the slides, although it is very amusing being an audio only listener. Yeah, I don't get you guys, but thank you. Appreciate it. A lot of you going to the YouTube once in a while and subscribe to the YouTube channel. It's about to say, it's better than listening to it at like four times speed or whatever

the zoomers do. Yeah. Although there was one person who's been putting in like chapter markers on the videos and that that person is a saint. Yes. I work in the mining industry. So naturally I have several incidents that choose from that I've either experienced firsthand or heard second or third hand.

Please see below for my potential contribution to the safety third section of your podcast. This particular incident occurred when I was working FIFO at an underground mine. Let's fly in, fly out. Oh, it's a real back of beyond stuff, then. Oh, yeah. The mine used surveyors to map and scan stops with the drone. Ah, so the claims to work in the mining industry. Can't even spell slopes. I mean, it's a stop.

What is a stop? That's in the next paragraph. I have been awake for so long. Damn it. Mine used surveyors to map and scan stops with the drone that had a scanner mounted to it worth several hundred thousand Australian dollars. Okay, they're Australian.

I'm not as impressed with the fly-in fly-out. Definitely more basically anywhere in Australia. You have to fly in. Or reference. A stop is a purposeful giant void. Several stories tall left behind from blowing up targeted or. Okay, so it's like a sort of Oracy yeah, you're making a cave

Yeah, that's what the kids are calling it rise. Yeah, there were a few Survellers at this ride Most of home had decades of experience one who was relatively new to the industry and quite young decades of experience, one who was relatively new to the industry and quite young. The surveyor was undertaking the routine task of using the drone to scan the stop and had an even younger vacation student with them on this trip down. I don't know if vacation is the right word. I don't have no idea. Like at the work experience kid.

I guess so. Who is like, actually, I think it's called slope. Yeah. Yeah. They made it to the correct heading and sent out the drone with the scanning equipment into the stope to start the scanning process. Now, some important context. Stope can be accessed through several different areas. See attached picture for simplified version. So safety controls are implemented to ensure you don't actually walk

into the stop or drive into the stop when operating machinery in the area. Because then you'd fall and die. Oh, I say because it's the big giant unmarked pit, I say. Yeah, exactly. It's huge, huge Mario 64 endless pit. Yeah. Okay, sure. I'm with you now. Yeah. Yeah. I got you. These safety controls differ across minds, but at the time, at the time included, among other measures, a set of high viz light weight plastic pipes suspended from the ceiling of the drive, which is the access tunnel to the stop. These were known as dingle dangles. What would hit your Australian stop real? Yeah, it sounds like too much syllables. Dingle dangles. Sounds like too much syllables for Australian. You know, oh, yeah, you can't go one of the two words

not saying a slur about it. Yeah, it's hopefully like a dingy dangie, you know, want to go to Maccas and then do a hate crime. These would hit your vehicle in alert you to the fact that you're coming near the edge of the stope. Back to the story. Some problems arose fairly quickly after the drone entered the stope, the remote controller for the drone, which had not been charged before they set out underground, started to get low on power. So it automatically recalled the drone, which was fine until it encountered the dingle dangles. The draft from the drones for pellers would cause the dingle dangles to move and flap around. Yeah, it would dingle the dangles. Sensing a potential hazard, the drone would retreat back into the stope, then again attempt to return to the landing point,

and once again encounter the dingle dangle hazard. Ironic traps for the very safety measures that's intended to be retouched by. Yes. Well, after a few rounds of this surveyor realized that drone was not going to get past the dangle dangles and back to the safety of the drive, our surveyor decided that instead of letting the drone go crashing to the stove when it eventually ran out of power, he would go past the dangle dangles himself, which is a big no, and attempt to catch the drone from underneath, which isn't even bigger no-no. I'm just going to do some like volunteer like platforming. Yeah, exactly. Then he could turn it off manually. Somehow, this part of the plan was successful, and he did indeed grab a hold of the drone, which was still turned on

with a lasso or what like He brought it past the dangle dangles into the drive where he could try to turn it off I made it He couldn't quite shut off the drone from the controller and the off button for the drone was located on the top of the drone Surrounded on all four sides by heavy duty spinning propellers. Okay, so I see why this is a bad idea, but also that's poor design, I feel. Yes, yes, he was like, he was not very good. On realizing this, he decided instead of releasing the drone, he would instead reach up and

over the blades to hit the off switch as he was a tall man with long arms. About to get a shorter. While he was successful in doing this, the blades were all successful in slicing his body. The cuts from the blades started from the mid chest and back up his arm and hand and claimed the tip of his pinky finger. Man about to get killed by a drone and it doesn't even arm. That was about to say. At this point, he was absolutely covered in blood and the poor vacation student was standing there in shock. After hastily wrapping the remains of his

shirt around him to slow the bleeding, they immediately started the process of getting back to the surface. I'll note here that driving underground is a skill and it is set out like a rabbit's warrant under there. An emergency would not be a great time to learn how to navigate out. Yeah, this is a very aggressive driving test. Driving instructor who cuts off one of their fingers and the passengers seat to motivate you. If you are going to get to the hospital as quickly as possible. Drive out of this hole. but it was quickly as possible. Drive out of this hole. Yeah. Right.

In mining, the correct emergency protocol, as you would call, emergency emergency emergency state put, an emergency response team would come to get you. Ever panic had set in. And so a Hasty radio call back to the surface had the surveyors on the surface coordinating with mine control to clear the decline vehicles. Yeah. To clear the decline

is it I think it might be decline in this case. I forget mining terms. Yeah. Australian vehicles. The decline on. Yeah, exactly. So, declared a vehicle so they could make a speedy exit right to the medical center on site. Being a remote site, the medical team patching up as best they can and fly them off site a few hours later with a green whistle which is pain relief. It's a morphine. Serenac. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

With the with the rest of the crew who were set to fly off site the same day, luckily his injuries weren't too severe and it retained the use of his bicky finger. I believe the tip even grew back and aside from some gnarly scars, he was mostly okay in the end. Amazing. I mean, the system works sort of. That's what we're going on now. But it is survived going off-prozical. I was interested in that like emergency response team. I was interested in like mining SWAT, you know? Yeah. After the incident, the drone policy was reviewed and they added, among other things, a key step that the drone controller should be charged prior to using it.

And then you should really let the equipment fall to us to the demise in the stulp rather than try and recover it in this matter. That robot died. That's what it's for. Needless to say, the vacation student did not return next year. Hopefully he wasn't too traumatized by the incident and retained a healthy sense of safety first and expensive equipment second for any future work. Thank you for your podcast. I particularly love the dry and dark humor you bring to the rather depressing subject of engineering disasters. I look forward to seeing a live show. Should you ever care to visit Australia? We got to do it. We got to do it. If Trash Eager can do it, we can do it. I'm sad I missed out, so we got to go to Australia. Yeah. Thanks again from woman in mining.

Thanks so much. Yes. All right. That was safety third. Our next episode will be on Chernobyl. Does anyone have any commercials before we go? Subscribe to the YouTube channel. We're going to commercials before we go? Subscribe to the YouTube channel. So that's the Patreon, but subscribe to the YouTube channel. Subscribe to the YouTube channel. I want my plaque. I want to get the plaque. I want to get the plaque.

Did I get the plaque? You become plaque people. That's right. See that? It is a real job. Exactly. Exactly. That gave me a nice certificate saying people enjoy listening

to me. Employee of the month at YouTube. Yeah. Exactly, that gave me a nice certificate saying people enjoy listening to me Employee of the month at YouTube. Yeah All right, I'm calling that an episode. I think we did a podcast. Yeah, we did it. Yeah, yeah, bye everybody. Bye everyone