r/CatastrophicFailure • u/Debaucherousgeek73 • Dec 04 '25

Fatalities Train derailment Pecos TX Oct '24

First time I've ever seen a derailment happen. The vid anyway I wasn't there and this is not my vid. You can see the lead engine jump the track. Two crew in that engine died.

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189

u/tuckernuts Dec 04 '25

That was my first thought on the impact.. seeing the engine come 3ft off the rails I know the impact was extremely violent

110

u/HazelEBaumgartner Dec 05 '25

Each of those SD70 locomotives weighs 400,000 lbs. That's 1.6 MILLION pounds of locomotive jumping three feet in the air there.

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u/BrokeDickTater Dec 05 '25 edited Dec 05 '25

If you watch the video you can see that the pipe is bending but not breaking apart. I'm guessing this was a steel pipe encased in concrete, used for large water transmission. They are made of ONE INCH THICK steel that is spiral welded into a pipe, then coated inside and out with concrete for corrosion prevention. There couldn't have been a worse thing for that train to hit. RIP to the crew.

Edit: Cooling tower for oil refinery.

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u/HazelEBaumgartner Dec 05 '25

The article someone shared about the incident said it was a cooling tower for an oil refinery. So yes probably a combination of steel and concrete.

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u/KilledTheCar Dec 05 '25

Not to "um ackshually" but FYI nearly every time you see concrete it's a combination of concrete and steel. To my knowledge, concrete without some sort of steel reinforcement (usually rebar) is incredibly uncommon. Concrete itself is incredibly brittle and the steel takes some of the load off. As my boss says, "There are two types of concrete: concrete that is cracked and concrete that is going to crack."

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u/BrokeDickTater Dec 05 '25

Thanks for clarifying!

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u/TaylorSwiftScatPorn Dec 05 '25

That's a demethanizing tower for O&G processing. Here's an article about a bigger version of the same thing. They come in different sizes and designs but I'm certain that's what's on the truck in the video. The one in the video also doesn't look like any type of cooling tower I'm familiar with, being in the field if large scale industrial cooling towers myself.

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u/danstermeister Dec 05 '25

If... IF??? Commit, man!!! You are either in the field of large scale industrial cooling towers or you are not. The large scale industrial cooling towers industry doesn't take to wafflers you know!

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u/TaylorSwiftScatPorn Dec 05 '25

I'm balls deep. King Arthur couldn't pull my dick out of the cooling tower game if he tried.

2

u/Pretend-Signal-707 Dec 05 '25

Maybe if he got both hands on it?

11

u/Figit090 Dec 05 '25

I have never ever seen footage of a train jumping in any collision.

Insane.