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Runaway Rail Cars at Portland, Ore., Yard Put Safety of Remote Control on Spot.

Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, May, 2004

By Brent Hunsberger, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

May 11--Shortly after sundown on Jan. 23, as rush hour drew to a close, almost 1,900 tons of lumber-laden freight cars rolled out of Union Pacific's Southeast Portland railyard on a train with no engine and no engineer. Nobody noticed.

The 17 railcars kept going for more than two miles, traveling at about 11 miles per hour down a main rail line used by Amtrak, past at least 20 public rail crossings -- some of them ungated -- and the warehouses and restaurants of inner Southeast Portland.

They came to rest on a curved stretch of tracks under the Broadway Bridge, where a surprised Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway crew found them minutes later in...

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