One summer night the crew of an eastbound freight had found a car in their train with a hotbox, an overheated journal bearing. They’d switched it into the fire train spur, properly blocked the wheels, notified the Gap night operator, and gone on to Norden. It was a glass-lined bulk tank car of fine California wine bound for the East to be bottled there and marketed. Car repairmen arrived in the morning from Roseville. They jacked up the journal, replace the bearing, checked the car and advised the Gap operator it was ready to go. The dispatcher was advised and an east freight approaching Colfax was given an order to pick up the car of wine, take it along in their train. Good railroading. Up to that point. The freight arrived about 1 PM. They took water on the head engine, the crew ate dinner at the cookcar, then brought the big Mallet up to the office and backed into the fire train spur to pick up the wine car. The head-end brakeman, who must have been a flatlander, removed the blocking which was okay, but he also released the hand brakes on the car and signaled the Mallet to couple in. Because of the curved track the couplings didn’t match when the tender bumped against the car so it began to roll free. The brakeman, instead of throwing some blocking under the wheels or climbing aboard and cinch up the brakes, ran ahead of the car and lined the derail switch so the car wouldn’t go off the track! It surely didn’t … Thirty tons of wine in a special car began to pick up speed. It split the crotch switch, went rolling merrily down the center siding and disappeared around a curve. A mile down the line at the lower eating car, engine crews on the two rear Mallets in the train and the conductor in his caboose might have stared wide-eyed when that wine car went sailing by at 30 miles an hour! Luckily, there was another derail at the west end of the center siding. The car went off the track there, turned over on its side and plowed up 200 feet of westbound before it came to a stop. The westbound main line was damaged and out of service. A valuable shipment lay half buried in gravel – all because of the misjudgment of one man. Word went out to a large track gang working near Blue Canon and a work train in that vicinity. When the work train and extra gang arrived up the eastbound, cables were rigged and the car pulled sideways enough to clear the westbound track. But the track was still askew and way out of surface. That would be a job for the track gang, which happened to be a Morrison-Knudsen contractor crew of about 40 men, mostly 4Fers. Meanwhile the tank car, lying on its side in the warm sun, began to build up pressure. It had three domes, with valves for filling and air vents to adjust pressure, so it was actually three compartments. Normally the vents admitted or released air when the car was upright on the track but now, on its side, wine instead of air began to flow in neat little streams from each vent. One by one and then two by two the men used cups from their thermos, tin cans, or just cupped hands to sample the product. And, it turned out, there were three choices: port, sherry or muscatel! By four o’clock when the roadmaster and trainmaster arrived, the MK foreman and his whole crew were lolling under the bushes having a great time, and no work was being done. The westbound track was still not safe for traffic.