On February 23, 2024, I was in Sonora, CA when I observed a Sierra Northern Railway work train dumping ballast at the site of a previous derailment. This is something I had never seen up close and personal before, at least on the Sierra so I thought it would be a good catch. The location was along Hospital Road between Washington Street and Mono Way. The previous derailment had occurred on January 19, 2024 when the “ Hill Job” passed this location. Two of the rear tank cars derailed while traveling over soft ground that had been compromised by recent rains. When the derailed rear tank car reached pavement at the hospital road crossing it swung out to the right into the roadway and struck several parked cars. The tank car eventually struck the crossing gate tower at Washington Street, which pushed the tower over and knocking it to the ground. Luckily there were no injuries as a result of the derailment and the tank cars were empty at the time.

On this day I filmed the train crew dumping ballast from a two bay hopper car. The crew was having to manually open and close the bay doors in order to release the ballast. I caught the train initially traveling westbound while dumping ballast down the middle of the tracks. The train stopped and the work crew decided to then dump ballast along the outside of the rails. The train reversed direction and began dumping the ballast along the outside of the rails. I couldn’t help but notice big piles of rock collecting on the tracks. Initially I thought this may be a problem but the hopper car and locomotive seemed to roll over the accumulated piles of ballast with no issues. After repositioning my camera to get a clear shot of the operation I decided to narrate in my intro, which I had planned to edit into the beginning of the video later, something went then went wrong. The hopper car rocked to one side and the train abruptly stopped. By the reaction of the work crew on the ground I knew the car had derailed. This was a first for me to actually catch a car detail in front of me and on camera. This was certainly not the intent of the video as my intent was to catch images of how the crew ballasted a section of track, but things unexpectedly happen on the railroad. I was just at the right place at the right time to catch this event unfold on camera. Needless to say the ballast of operation was over, at least until the crew could rerail the hopper car. Be sure to hit like and subscribe, and thanks for watching!