James Allen McKnight (1918 - 1974)

Born 26 Jun 1918 in Texas

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 23 Sep 1974 at age 56 in Houston, Texas

Biography

Served in the military in WWII.

Worked as a railroad engineer. Died of 3rd degree burns from a tank car explosion. He was the only person to die in the following accident:

About noon on September 21, 1974 2 loaded “jumbo” tank cars, cars 17 and 18 of a 145-car complement, were uncoupled as a unit at the crest of the gravity hump in the Southern Pacific Transportation Companys (SP) Englewood Yard at Houston, Texas. The two cars passed through the hump master retarder and group retarder without being slowed and accelerated as they moved down the grade into bowl track at a speed of 18 to 20 mph, the two ton cars impacted an empty tank car. Upon impact, the coupler of the empty tank car rode over the coupler of car 17 and punctured the tank head. Butadiene spilled from the car and formed a vapor cloud, which dispersed over the area. After 2 to 3 minutes, the varpor exploded violently; as a result, 1 person died and 235 were injured. Total damages amounted to about $13 million, which included the destruction of 231 railroad cars and substantial damage to 282 others.

The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the overspeed impact was the failure of the retarding system to slow the two coupled tank cars and the absence of a backup system to control cars which pass through the retarders at excessive speeds. The failure of the retarding system was caused by foreign substances on the wheels of the two cars that preceded the two tank cars through the retarder

Sources

• http://worldconnect.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=PED&db=bcduke&id=I0298