A Photography Subject Question: "Crashes and Wrecks?"

[Anonymous]

When I was attending Texas A&M University in Kingsville, Texas back in the 1990's I made it a point to take my camera down to the quaint little railyard there.

One day, in between some (ironically now forgotten) class...I went down to that railyard and was suprised to see a crew at work on the locomotive and track. A UP locomotive had passed over an open switch and caused quite a mess. I snaped some pics...with permission...and filed them away.

Now, I own my own railroad (sort of) and I was wondering...

Do you stage wrecks and crashes? Do you photograph incidental mishaps on your line?

Have at it...what say you...?

[Tom The Brat]

[img=left]http://www.tomruby.com/MLS/Levi/100_0758.JPG[/img=left]I don't stage them, but often photograph them if they're interesting or big.

[cacole]

Fortunately, most of the time our models do not catch fire, become crushed or splintered, or tear up the track during a derailment or accident like the prototype railroads.

We used to have a member of our local HO scale club who had taken a bunch of cheap boxcars and other rolling stock and melted, burned, and mangled it to look more like a real train that had been in a major wreck, and he would set up a display on our club layout during the open houses; but unless you do that to your rolling stock it doesn't really look like anything has happened to it.

[vsmith]

My work bench looks like a trainwreck, does that count?

[Marty Cozad]

Never stage, but if a good one happens we shot it.

[Tom The Brat]

Since my 0-4-0s haven't seen much action lately, and because I still think incongruity is funny, I had Lucy pulling an evans boxcar around the shop yesterday when a curious dog walker stopped. As we were chatting and he was telling me about his trains when he was a boy, and the dog was sitting obediently at his feet, the silly train just stopped and fell over. It had been running for hours.

"And I see that still happens now and then," he remarked.