Fatal Runaway

Doing a study of a hillside this morning when a blue locomotive from the Santa Rita mine came up from the south. The engineer and I exchanged waves. 30 minutes later it came back down, barreling down the mountain with 4 or 5 cars of ore, out of control, spewing smoke from what might have been locked brakes, ore and gravel flying out of the cars. I stepped into the road to get away from the flying rock. Looked down to the intersection, crossing guards down luckily. Didn't hear anything. Figured it might have been a bad driver. Kid came down on a bicycle and asked me if I thought it was weird. "Yep" it was. In years of living there (Hanover, NM) he hadn't seen the train ever go 50 mph coming back to the mine. He left to investigate. Then I heard sirens. Train jumped the tracks about a mile down. Three people in the locomotive died. The older man, the one who waved, apparently was an artist. I couldn't find anything on his work on the internet. His girlfriend was riding with him in the locomotive although she didn't work for the mine. They were both new to the area. Very sad.

article from Silver City Sun News