Model train wreck ?

tatans wrote:

This will raise a controversey I bet: My warped mind got me to thinking if anyone has ever incorporated a train wreck as a permanent part of their layout????  Maybe an old steamer down a bank with a few cars on their side, or a beat up old diesel at the bottom of a trestle.  I can hear some people now saying this would put a negative spin on the hobby(remember the word "prototype" )----and if you have photos let's see them.

New Haven--

Generally, railroads clean up their wrecks as soon as they happen, UNLESS the wreck occurs in a spot where it's impossible to get to the wreck, say a deep canyon or a swamp.  Passing by Cascade Summit on the old ex-SP Cascade line into Oregon, I have seen the rusting wreck of several freight cars WAY down on the mountainside where no crane could ever pull them up.  I also know of a string of derailed boxcars still rusting in the desert air on the old San Diego and Arizona Eastern, WAY down a mountain where rescuing them was impossible. 

I would think that if you were going to model a wreck, you should make sure that it's in a spot that is inaccessable, or dangerous to retrieve the wreckage.  Myself, I'm considering a bashed-up boxcar at the bottom of Turner Canyon on my own Yuba River Sub, just to show that no matter how careful and safe the railroad thinks it is, these things happen.  Of course, the whole thing hinges on just WHICH of my 'valuable' boxcars I want to melt into a twisted hunk of steel, LOL. 

Tom

A half-century or so ago, Model Railroader ran a two-page photo feature on a gentleman who built wreck dioramas - overturned loco, wood-sheathed boxcar splintered around the tender's water end, torn up rail, splintered ties, gouges in the right-of-way...

In my prototype experience, I rode the 'Super Skunk' east from Fort Bragg in the late '80s.  Just to the west of the tunnel we got a good look at the undersides of a bunch of freight cars laying on their sides.  I don't know whether they were the remains of a derailment/turnover or simply a case of using unconventional materials for a retaining wall...

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

At the Stevens Point Train Show/Swap Meet, the Waupaca Club brings in there layout which has a Derailment on it. I think it's suppose to model the "Big Medina Junction" Derailment, which happened in the 60s or 70s with the SOO and CNW. Big pile up.

On my 4X8 I have a Boxcar on the side of the ROW. It's placed in-between a rock cut and would be difficult, but not impossible to retrieve in the Proto-type.

Heat. I guess would work.

I had thought about it, would give a good use to have a 200 ton crane.

I think the hardest part for any of us is finding a piece of junk that we could use for a wreck scene.

A friend of mine teaches Incident Command for fire and EMS asked me to build a layout for demonstrating such scenarios. These pictures were taken by him and used in one of our table top exercises.

Packer wrote:

I think the hardest part for any of us is finding a piece of junk that we could use for a wreck scene.

Not a problem at all for me!

loathar wrote:

Packer wrote: I think the hardest part for any of us is finding a piece of junk that we could use for a wreck scene. Not a problem at all for me!

I've picked up junk for half a buck at train shows that wouldn't be useful for anything BUT a wreck, if I wasn't a kitbasher.  (If you only need one end of a caboose, who cares if the puppy chewed the other end?)

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

No train wreck.

However, retired locos around the roundhouse, if you're modelling the 1950s like I am, seemed very appropriate. 

Here we see retired GER 2-8-0 No. 562 set out on Dorset Centre's House Track with a hotbox while enroute from Berger Yard to Montreal for scrapping.

Not exactly a train wreck but wrecked equipment? Yes! An acqaintance of mine from years back had three or four dummy Athearn F7s that he had "wrecked" with heat and had sitting on a siding in his yard. One of these "wrecked" body shells he had mounted on a flat car.

I visited an N-Scale layout in the San Diego area about twenty years ago and the brass hat had a bunch of wrecked reefers sitting on a rural siding! He also had a hook sited not too far away; that is about the closest I ever came to a model of a wreck site.

Nice thread everyone,

I think a old wreck beside or below the tracks is a great idea. Here's a wrecked 4 wheel train wagon down in the Taieri gourge on New Zealand's south island. I guess it was not worth the effort to recover it.

I photographed it while on holidays. If you ever go to NZ try a trip on this amazing railway that runs from Dunedin to Pukerangi, you won't regret it. 

more photos of the gorge here http://s249.photobucket.com/albums/gg208/alantrains/Taieri%20Gorge/

cheers 

You could have an old Train wreck and just say it was part of an old movie set, As is the case on the "Great Smokey Mountain Railroad" The train wreck in the movie "The Fugitive" was filmed there and the wreck is Still there! pretty cool... and here's a couple of pictures I took a couple of years ago..

"plans plans plans... all this V&AL guy has are plans!!!"

 ya ya, give me the space an dI'll finally build all this stuff!

ok: wreck on the V&AL. The Plan calls for a NMRA standard module... maybe.  The scene will be a 2 track main way up the site of a hill. In the early spring, an Alco Big Boy was taking a test run on the V&AL enroute to points west for delivery to the UP. A test  train was run light to the coal fields. The train consisted of a V&AL 4-8-4 and 2 converted passenger coaches. Ubeknownst to anyone, there was  cluvert that was plugged up with ice and debris. Meltwater had instead built up and seeped through under the railbed. As the massive 4-8-8-4 rolled over the area, the roadbed gave way, sending both locomotives and cars down into the valley stream below.  Given the location, and the size of the locomotives, V&AL and Also engineers decided that the risk of trying to recover the lost train would be too great. The rail line was the only acess to that stretch of valley, and if they scrapped the train where it was, the V&AL would have lost more money with dealys and re-routes. The line was fixed propely, and the wrecks remain at the bottom of the valley.

IT's an idea I've had for quite a while since I have plastic deck-top models of both locomotives and a few old passenger cars I can put down there as well.

I'm also working on several wrecked locmotives to mount on flat cars enroute back to the shops.  railpictures.net is a creat resource for prototype wrecks. I'ce gota whole folder full of photos to reference when I get destructive.

model them?...uhmm, what about them real ones we have...8-P

The club I was in had to tear out its old layout because the owner sold the building. I found a hopper car in a mountain tunnel  lodged in the benchwork out of sight...

This isn't mine.  I found this diorama on the web a few years ago. 

Features a GE U-Boat that "Literally" became a marine  "U-Boat!"

In the January 2001 issue of RMC, there's a feature on a diorama, built by Doug Hole, showing a mountainside derailment.  It's the most well-done modelled wreck scene that I've seen:  besides a wreck crew and equipment on-site, there's ripped up track, crumpled freight cars and locos, and spilled lading (grain and lumber).  According to the article, it took second place at an NMRA convention in 1996, and was later moved to the NMRA headquarters, in Chattanooga, for display.

Wayne 

Trainland, USA is a Lionel display located just east of Des Moines, IA.  It's open to the public from Memorial Day to Labor Day.  One of the scenes in the Midwestern segment has a couple of freight cars that have plunged into the river and are in the process of being extracted by a work crew with a railroad crane. 

I have also seen similar wreck scenes on travelling club layouts at different trainshows.  Of course one of the issues with arranging such a scene is that if it is to be permanent, it has to be located on a branchline, a spur, or other unused section of track. 

Had one wreck on my old layout that I exaggerated for a couple pictures.  I even included a couple wrecked vehicles in the Burger King parking lot that were smashed.

Of course, my old layout had occasional crossing accidents.

And the occasional pileup.

Kevin

rogertra wrote:

No train wreck. However, retired locos around the roundhouse, if you're modelling the 1950s like I am, seemed very appropriate.  Here we see retired GER 2-8-0 No. 562 set out on Dorset Centre's House Track with a hotbox while enroute from Berger Yard to Montreal for scrapping.

AntonioFP45 wrote:

This isn't mine.  I found this diorama on the web a few years ago.  Features a GE U-Boat that "Literally" became a marine  "U-Boat!"

from my airfield, across the way, not a train wreck, but a speeding corvette rear-ended a semi slowing for a turn. fortunatly the 'vette driver ducked, and survived.A front end loader was comandeered from a near by construction site to lift the truck so the driver could be airlifted:

Not on mine per say, but a club President did manage to tip a PRR Duplex on it's side while it was running, bringing downa train next to it and the one behind. . But they didn;t let me get the breakdown trian out before they picked it up. And whoever parked the train did so in a bad spot.