Ok, thanks for seeing the power lines. The Chicago Trib says the power poles were 60 feet high and 300 feet east of the railroad embankment. This agrees very well with the map images in my document, using the scale on the left of the image.
That means the descent was very gradual, which agrees with witness reports. It also means anything steeper than 63% must have been in a stall and is not a feasible angle given the horizontal distance it had to cover to the tracks.
Once again we have to decide how much must be discarded for the remainder to make sense. The artificial horizon was treated with skepticism in the official reports. If we rule out the witness statements of the vertical bank, everything else fits.
ETA: The RR embankment was said to be the highest landform in the area. That means the power lines would have been somewhat less than 60 feet above the tracks, possibly considerably less.
Last edited by BRDuBois; 8th Mar 2016 at 15:37.