My BEST wrecks happened in my youth. My brother and I would run our Athearn Hustler around our (at least 4x8) table top loop. With a little too much throttle it would not hold the rail on the 22" curve, and would slide on its side partway around. After that it was FULL throttle down the long straight. The Hustler never did reach the wall 3 or 4 feet from the edge of the layout, but it did reach the floor 3' down.
We operated our F7 and GP9 and their trains much better.
Timber Head Eastern Railroad "THE Railroad Through the Sierras"
WCfan wrote: Well this was a freak accident that just happened today. I was testing my Athearn SW1500. Now, not all of my couplers are the same height, which was the problem with 2 of my boxcars. So after a couple times around the loop I felt just fine that they would be ok. So any way I had to go and answer the phone. Usually I stop the locomotive when I'm doing something, but this time I forgot. This is what I think what happened: The boxcar behind the gondola unhooked on the grade and rolled down the hill. The boxcars landed at the bottom of the grade. The SW1500 push the cars up the hill, No problem there right? Wrong, for some odd reason the coupler on the boxcar hung just low enough it to hook on the switch part. The SW1500 kept pushing and one of the boxcars went to the side. I was lucky enough just to com in the room about when it ended, so I turned off the power. Now I learned a lesson today, have all your couplers the same height.
Well this was a freak accident that just happened today. I was testing my Athearn SW1500. Now, not all of my couplers are the same height, which was the problem with 2 of my boxcars. So after a couple times around the loop I felt just fine that they would be ok. So any way I had to go and answer the phone. Usually I stop the locomotive when I'm doing something, but this time I forgot. This is what I think what happened: The boxcar behind the gondola unhooked on the grade and rolled down the hill. The boxcars landed at the bottom of the grade. The SW1500 push the cars up the hill, No problem there right? Wrong, for some odd reason the coupler on the boxcar hung just low enough it to hook on the switch part. The SW1500 kept pushing and one of the boxcars went to the side. I was lucky enough just to com in the room about when it ended, so I turned off the power. Now I learned a lesson today, have all your couplers the same height.
Did you put the spray paint on there?
Was it Jessica on the phone..?
fwright wrote: Learned a couple of things the hard way watching my son:- There is such a thing as too steep a downgrade for model railroads and toy trains- There is no such thing as brakes on model and toy trains- When the train starts free-wheeling down the steep downgrade, the only things left in control are gravity and God- father and son can share a moment of helpless terror together watching a free-wheeling Lionel passenger train charging downgrade turn the track into the guide rails for a gravity seeking missle launcherYes, the train succesfully launched, and turned its gravity seeking guidance system on. Yes, the silence is deafening between launch and impact, and about 10 seconds after impact. No, the transformer "off" stop did not survive our pathetic attempts to abort the launch. Yes, ever since The Event, all grades have been relaid with O42 curves instead of O27. Yes, Lionel trains are quite durable. Losses included a marker light and bell on the engine, a roof off one passenger car, and cracked roof and ends on another passenger car. Certain losses are acceptable. No, no Lionelville citizens have reported traumatic injuries in the making of this drama.laterFred W
Learned a couple of things the hard way watching my son:
- There is such a thing as too steep a downgrade for model railroads and toy trains- There is no such thing as brakes on model and toy trains- When the train starts free-wheeling down the steep downgrade, the only things left in control are gravity and God- father and son can share a moment of helpless terror together watching a free-wheeling Lionel passenger train charging downgrade turn the track into the guide rails for a gravity seeking missle launcher
- There is such a thing as too steep a downgrade for model railroads and toy trains
- There is no such thing as brakes on model and toy trains
- When the train starts free-wheeling down the steep downgrade, the only things left in control are gravity and God
- father and son can share a moment of helpless terror together watching a free-wheeling Lionel passenger train charging downgrade turn the track into the guide rails for a gravity seeking missle launcher
Yes, the train succesfully launched, and turned its gravity seeking guidance system on. Yes, the silence is deafening between launch and impact, and about 10 seconds after impact. No, the transformer "off" stop did not survive our pathetic attempts to abort the launch. Yes, ever since The Event, all grades have been relaid with O42 curves instead of O27. Yes, Lionel trains are quite durable. Losses included a marker light and bell on the engine, a roof off one passenger car, and cracked roof and ends on another passenger car. Certain losses are acceptable. No, no Lionelville citizens have reported traumatic injuries in the making of this drama.
later
Fred W
My Youtube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/JR7582 My Flickr Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wcfan/
2005 Santa Fe RH&MS convention in Pasadena. I Volunteered to open my N scale railroad for the layout tour. It was my first open house (naturally). Everything went fine on the morning test run (of course!). Guests started arriving and I sent the two trains out for their continual run. About ten minutes later I heard a crash deep in the bowels of the staging level. The eastbound train had been sent down the wrong track slamming into the rear of another train. The cars knocked cars of trains on the adjacent tracks off the rails. About that time the westbound pulled over on the 1-1/2 turn up hill spiral, which had never happened (eastbounds had sometimes bunched up when the slack ran in and folded a couple of cars off the rails on the downgrade). That ended the operation. Moral: Never, but never, challenge the Demonstration Demon!
ardenastationmaster
Guilford Guy wrote:Horn hooks are great for straightlining cars! A kid in my youth club had a long train of 40 ft cars with horn hooks and when one truck jumped at the start of a curve he grabbed it to correct it but the 3 locomotives kept pulling which straightline around 20 or so cars!
Actually KD couplers will do the same..Its all about train handling skills and not grabbing cars when they start to derail.
The X2F coupler will work quite well when properly body mounted.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
In 1990 a 50 foot cat invaded the small PA town of Dennyville. From out of nowhere a giant feline emerged and was strolling down mainstreet knocking over buildings and boxcars and using vehicles as little more than playtoys. He merrily ate the foliage as local residents looked on in horror. Not even the national guard couild stop him as a convoy of army trucks was merely brushed aside. Then just as mysteriously as he appeared he left. While there were no fatalities the ground was littered with toppled freight cars and their spilled cargos.
The fictionalized version just sounds alot more interesting than saying a cat climbed onto the layout and knocked down some of my train cars.
I had a 70 car train of walther quads fully loaded with live loads. all rode on kd barber trucks with intermountian 36" wheels. three proto gp-30's on point, two 30's and a gp-20 40 cars back, and three more gp-30' on rear. had just climbed a left curve 2 1/2 percent grade with no problem. went through the next town, rounded the curve leaving town, came to passing siding,
switch was fouled with piece of ballast in pionts. they were perfectly centered. the first two lead units went straight through switch and in between tracks. they abruptly stopped...........the helpers..........didn't.............15 cars in front of mid-train units went to outside of curve.............all between mid and rear end helpers went to both sides of track in town, there was a scale 10" of coal on the station platform, two chevys and a ford were buired in the station parking lot. rear helpers stopped 9 cars shy of mid train units. i had screened real coal. there was a dust cloud rising over the back drop.
thre investigation revealed that the switch had recently been ballasted. the "work crew" had failed to clean the switch and its points. the pionts had been glued in place along with the piece of ballast. i was not cited, and not banned from live loads on the club layout. as i had been running live loads there for 8+ years with not one derailment of a loaded car. empties however.........are another story.......especially with helpers.
Alex
This one is another cat-astrophe... (Don't worry-- keeping the day job!)
I built a step stool with a layout-level shelf on it so that my young children could observe trains in operation. Unfortunately, the cat decided that she liked lying on the shelf next to the power pack and watching the trains go by.
One day, I was operating my beautiful Kato HO-scale TGV Sud-est (orange & gray, powered loco, 3 coaches, dummy loco) at realistic speeds (say 120 or so scale mph). Now suddenly, the cat, which had formerly been quite content to simply watch the trains go by, decided to take an experimental poke at the train as it zipped by. She barely made contact with it, but the train rocked sideways, jumped the track, and began its graceful arc to the hard concrete floor 48" below. I made a desperate grab for the train, but succeeded only in clutching the unpowered loco, smashing the pantograph and snapping off the lead truck, which remained coupled to the coach ahead of it. The rest of the train augered in to the hard deck. The resulting "explosion" was spectacular, to say the least. The largest remaining piece of the loco was about a square inch (even the motor came apart), and pieces of the loco and coaches were strewn over about twenty square feet of the floor. Only the dummy loco and the rear-most coach were salvageable.
Needless to say, the cat is now banned from the basement when I'm operating trains, and I keep my spray bottle of wet water handy to discourage her when she does get down. Even so, there are times when it's obvious that cat has been doing her Godzilla impersonation on the layout when I'm not around. Grrrr.
And before you ask, it's my WIFE's cat. I can't afford a divorce.
Connecticut Valley Railroad A Branch of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford
"If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." -- Henry Ford
See a good model train wreck on my YouTube Channel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdgPYV_2Cdo
Train Wrecks are not instant, and take time to complete.
I remember as kids we abused the Lionel O scale Hudson and it punched through everything we put on the track. Keep in mind these items were semi-stone/concrete like building blocks and we were trying to discover the mass needed to stop the engine cold. I suppose we should have picked up a few cobblestones or a few bricks from the street to make some real blocks.
Where to start :)
Um, well, we had a prototypical operation at the lexington hub division modular exhibition.There was a member with 2 kitbashed Guilford GP40-2LW's. Well I was keeping my passenger a good ways ahead and looked back and saw it wasn't there. I stopped on the outskirts of crossingville, told the conductor to guard the end of the train (portable dude wit red flag) and went to check out what had happened. I saw the end of his train stopped near West Acton so I followed it along... Turned out one of the Guilford Widecabs had decided to do a barrel roll although it only succeeded in falling on its side. That is prototypical operation.
Now When I was acting as the yard master we did not have much of a lead aka a 9" jumper. We had to use the inside mainline as the lead. Well, a train had just passed and the other was on the other side of the layout so I throw one of the automatic switches. I was assembling a large 30 car train of 2 bays. Turned out I had flipped the switch which sent you over the inside main on a diamond to the outside main. I had a high CV and had just crossed the diamond when i realized the mistake and throttled down unfortunately the train kept on going and slid right into the audiences favorite train Thomas, who was running at about throttle settign 20 down the outer main. Thomas jumped off but was quickly rigthed and stopped. I was trying to get out just as the other train came barreling along the inside main. Luckily it stopped and the switch crew was able to get it back into the yard.
When the Guilford locos had another back up, the end of his train was stuck ungarded in the tunnel. The Tunnel began on a module rigth beside the corner module. I unplugged the throttle and move over a ways to plug it back in when i see the end of the Big G freight stuck. I tried to find a jack to plug in the throttle and I did but not before seeing the train round the bend. It went into emergency but got away with derailing the tank cars at teh rear of the the Big G train.
If earthquakes count-the 1994 Northridge one did over $1000 in damage.
My biggest problem with a model train wreak came in a Intercontinental Missile count down review meeting. Two of us engineers did not need to pay attention to the meeting. So I was telling the hydraulics engineer about the time I was running three trains. The layout was in an el shaped room. The second level had a 90 degree crossing at the corner of the room. Two trais collided on the second level and fell onto a train on the first level.
As I finished this sad story my buddy looked me straight in the eye and asked,
"DID YOU CRY MUCH?"
Mine happened just last week. A friend of my wife and her four children were visiting from out of state and I was showing the train off to the kids. I had just told them not to touch anything when two trains were about to pass. The oldest boy reached over and hit a ground throw before I could stop him. This caused my Atlas GP9 to switch to the outside line, just missing my Kato PA1/PB1 and punching through the outer train. The GP9 and about 8 cars found the floor (at least there was carpeting). It knocked several couplers off, including the accumate from the GP9, which I still haven't found (It has a Red Caboose unimate on it for now).
The youngest child later pulled the Kato off the layout, breaking its coupler. And the oldest kid (who threw the ground throw) decided to modify my Spectrum 4-8-2. The coupler was missing, so he unthreaded the screw holding rear truck to the tender and superglued a freight truck with coupler to the tender. Of course he didn't bother telling me about it. I found it a couple of hours after they had left. It took about an hour to remove the freight truck and ream out the hole so I could reattach the correct truck.
It wasn't a good week.
The sad part is that I've been running on the "Pink Foam Express for almost three years and had finally finished the scenery in a marathon session two weeks prior to this happening. It was the first time anyone other than family had seen the completed layout.
Adam Thompson Model Railroading is fun!
Iceman_c27 wrote:I am surprised there is only one photo!
Allegheny2-6-6-6 wrote:to keep them from crashing onto the floor and smashing into a million pieces at my wife's suggestion I've placed netting around the entire perimeter at places where the railroad runs near the edge f the bench work.