Click the green flag twice. In loving memory of those who died in the 1993 Amtrak Big Bayou Canot accident. Wreck request from Techguy2008.
Credit to Amtrak Prototype and model. A few minutes prior to the accident, the tugboat Mauvilla Owned by Warrior and Gulf Navigation made a wrong turn on the Mobile River and entered the Big Bayou Canot, an un-navigable channel of water crossed by a CSX Transportation Swing Bridge. The pilot of the tugboat, Willie Odem had not been properly trained on how to use his radar, which this and the low visibility due to the fog that morning lead to him not knowing that he was off course. The boat also lacked a compass or water charts. Odem, believed he was still on the Mobile River and though that the Bridge on the radar was another tugboat. At about 2:45 the the tugboat Mauvilla struck the bridge. The bridge had been designed to Allow a section of the bridge to rotate to allow boats to pass, but it had not been designed to withstand unintended movement, this caused the swing section of the bridge to moved three feet out of alignment creating a large kink in the tracks. Amtrak's Sunset Limited train, powered by three locomotives (one GE Genesis P40DC number 819 in the front, and two EMD F40PHs, numbers 262 and 312) en route from Los Angeles, California to Miami, Florida with 220 passengers and crew aboard, crossed the Big Bayou Swing Bridge at around 70 miles per hour (113 km/h) and derailed at the kink. The first of its three locomotives slammed into the displaced span, causing that part of the bridge to collapse into the water beneath. The lead locomotive embedded itself nose-first into the canal bank, and the other two locomotives, together with the baggage car, dormitory car and two of the six passenger cars, plunged into the water. The locomotives' fuel tanks, each of which held several thousand gallons of diesel fuel, ruptured upon impact, resulting in a massive fuel spill and a fire. Forty-seven people, 42 of whom were passengers, were killed, many by drowning, others by fire/smoke inhalation.
