By 
More photos from my dad’s collection. Probably Kansas, possibly Barton County, since that has always been Dad’s primary area of interest. An AT&SF locomotive is down, a Union Pacific box car and an assortment of other railroad cars. The automobiles in the background of the third photo may help date it.
Any thoughts on this, Robert? Or anyone?
UPDATE: Robert Collins of Andover just sent his observations. Robert is an author and a historian with a strong knowledge of railroads. He said:
The photos could be taken in the late 1920s or early 1930s. The UP
boxcar seems to have wood sides and steel ends, which was still in use
at that time. There’s also an outside-braced boxcar in the first
photo, and I think those came into use right about that time. The
tank car in the second shot also looks to be from that period.
The other thing that comes to me about this pictures is that they
don’t look like a derailment so much as a collision-type wreck. The
pictures I’ve seen of derailments generally have cars off the rails,
or on their sides, in regular order. Cars may even stack up, but
there’s still a line, since the train was moving in one direction.
Notice in the second photo, one car is on the tracks at a rough 90-
degree angle to the wrecked cars. The two cars in the first shot
behind the locomotive appear to have slammed into each other after
coming to an abrupt stop, which is much more like a collision. It
seems to me that the track the crane is on in the first shot is the
track the train was on when whatever happened happened. Notice that
second track angling towards that first one.
I can’t be certain, but I wonder if something was on the tracks and
hit the train, or the engineer stopped the train too fast to avoid
something. I’m sure, a wreck like that, there ought to be something
in the local papers about it.
