The following is a post from another board. This past Thursday (1/17/2002) the GSWR suffered a tragic derailment near Cuthbert resulting in the death of an engineer instructor. Cuthbert is located on the former CofG line that ran from Smithville to Eufaula/Montgomery. If you attended the CGRHS fall meeting last year in Albany you probably were with us when we toured the GSWR facilities in Smithville. Weather permitting, I may try to ride over to Cuthbert this weekend and see if I can get any further info. Here is the post:

Hulcher has retreived both locos:GP38 3837 (lead unit heavily damaged) and GP40 4028 (repairable) from the washout located at MP 304 or about 5 miles east of Cuthbert,Ga. Engineer instructor was killed and trainee escaped with a broken foot and had to walk about 4 miles to get help. Accident happened about 2:30 am thursday morning. A large beaver pond adjacent to fill and at the mouth of the pipe, broke loose and scoured the base of the 20' fill causing it to cave in. The 20 car train was travling west on it's run from Smithville to Cuthbert. Operations should be back up once fill is repaired. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the engineers family.

-- Bryan Smith (bsmith3608@aol.com), January 18, 2002

Answers

Bryan:

My name is Jeff Hinkle with Railroad Risk Management, Inc., the third party administrator of claims for the Georgia Southwestern Railroad...as such, we are assisting with the investigation of the 1/17/02 incident at Cuthbert and came upon your 1/18/02 article with great interest...you indicate the cause of the accident is related to a large beaver pond adjacent to the drainage area, which broke loose causing what you referred to as the "cave in"...the source of this information is requested...please respond via email or feel free to contact me by phone @ (866) 878-7764 or (540) 265-7074 as soon as possible...Thank you.

-- Jeff E. Hinkle (jhinkle@rrmi.rev.net), January 24, 2002.