Saint LouIs-San Francisco Train 139 has come down from Oklahoma on June 24, 1978, 68 cars, mostly grain hoppers, tank cars for the Gulf, seven empties and a caboose, all behind GP38-2 685. Rattling along at eight miles an hour on Cotton Belt rails, the slack has unexpectedly run in, dumping a half dozen or so cars (but fortunately not the tank car, background) off the Trinity River Bridge in North Fort Worth. Resulting damage to bridge and cars will take several days to clean up, and according to the U.S. Department of Transportation Accident/Incident Report will cost the railroad and its insurers an estimated $96,000 in pre-inflation 1978 dollars (three times that today).
