Runaway mine cars! Was the C&S "careless"?

Don’t you love those runaway mine car scenes in movies like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom or Harry Potter?  They’re not so fun in real life, however!

According to the Central City newspaper, the Gilpin Railroad seems to have made it a practice to send “from one car to a train of cars down a steep incline [for] a distance of several miles without an engine.”  Mind you, someone had to operate the hand brakes.  On January 17th, 1910, that someone was a 31 year old man by the name of James Tabb.

Tabb was riding two cars of concentrate on their way to Blackhawk.  He had nearly made the three mile descent when, at the last curve before the Blackhawk roundhouse, he lost control and the cars left the track, taking Tabb to his death.

Richard B Jackson from gilpintram.com

A coroner’s jury came to this conclusion: “We find that James Tabb came to his death at the roundhouse in Black House [Hawk?] through an accident caused by runaway cars on the Gilpin railroad, and that said accident was caused by the carelessness of the company [C&S] by not providing for the safety of its employees.”

The Central City newspaper went on to say, in regards to the practice of running cars without an engine, that “It is to be hoped for the safety of the men operating the trains, as well as those who might be in the way of an onrush of cars, that this practice cease.”

Source:
A Documentary History of the South Park Line: Vol. 8: The Clear Creek District in the Twentieth Century by Daniel W. Edwards.  Pg. 99.