Worst Model train accident!

[arkansasrailfan]

One day I left a train running by accident, and when I came back cars were on the floor, the E8a had ground its wheels in to the track, but everything was okay, and that E8 still runs. Another was a Intermodel derailed, spilling cars on to the 2 track, and my crack train came along and derailed also!
Another would be when an entire yard move went off the yard and became a swamp move. Once, a train derailed, and it took 6 months for me to relize that a boxcar was between two bridges. Another was when an entire mixed ran off a bridge. Then an entire train disapeered in a tunnel, discoved last year.
Then a train went into a river, another, slammed into a another.
Then the ones I witnessed. One just went off, causing a heck of a wreck. A TGV derailed, bending at odd angles. Then a train rear ended another train, and then a Dcc train had didn't have enough power and had to be shoved upgrade. Another time I ran fast as possible into a siding and wrecked because I was trying to beat another train. Oops.

[steamage]

Had a little finder bender last Christmas day. Rule G may have been suspected.

[Looshi]

Had a little finder bender last Christmas day. Rule G may have been suspected.

 I love that figure! I'd be scratching my head too.

[oscaletrains]

you guys takeing your trains for flights off the layout should do what my dad and i are doing, at your layouts edge place a panel of plexiglas about 2" high from the scenery base to keep locos and cars from getting flight lessons. 

[bnsfkline]

One time at K-10's, My A&S GP38-2 duo rear ended a derailed Christmas Train. Someone forgot to shut off the power on the Analog track!

 Oh yeah, no 1300 scale feet drop to worry about!

[shayfan84325]

I witnessed another crash at the train show on January 26:  On a big N scale modular layout one guy had just put about 3 coal hoppers on the track behind some diesel locos (I'm no good at spotting diesels) and sent off down the track.  He didn't realize that a 20 car local freight was coming the other way.  The locos met inside a tunnel (really!) and the hoppers accordianed along the track.  As we say in Cache county - Bummer Dude!

These things never happened before DCC, one more bit of realism!

[Heartland Division CB&Q]

I happened. It just happened.  This morning my layout was attacked by my own clumsiness.

I entered to model train room, and just for fun, I thought I would operate a few trains. But wait!

What's all that flckering? One of the fluorescent lights was going bad. (I have fluorescent lights in a drop ceiling.)

It looked a bit like a thunderstorm as the train passed under the flashing light. However, I knew I had to replace the bad fluorescent tube.

The light is immediately above my coke oven complex. My coke oven complex is based on the Walthers kit, but I included extra buildings, structures, and machines that I scratch built. I have been happy with how my coke oven complex looked.

I stood on a chair to reach the light. The cover is one of those "cracked ice", translucent thingees. I lifted the cover to scoot it to the side on top of a ceiling tile.

The cover caught one of the wire hangers holding up the metal frames. That resulted in the cover bowing upward and striking into the hanging fluorescent light fixture. It was just enough force to cause the fixture to unhook itself from the chains that supported it.

So ......if you can picture this ....... I was standing on a chair holding up the "cracked ice" cover with the flourescent fixture laying on the cover. All of this time, all of that stuff was immediately above the my coke oven complex.

That was definately one of those "OH NO's" !

Disaster struck as I was in the process of juggling everything so that I could re-hook the fixture on chains. The "cracked ice" cover slipped through the metal frames and dropped onto the coke oven complex. The cover broke  as did several pieces in the coke oven complex.

As it stands now, the light is back together with new fluorescent tube and new cover. The broken coke oven pieces are on the work table and they are glued together.

Model Railroading is Fun....... (Huh?!!!)

 

 

[john galt]

My worst train accident was when i returned from the Boeing Train show, which I attended with my son.  and the first words out of his big mouth to my wife was "Dad spent $400.00 on train stuff"

 

my 2nd worst train accident was when my wife saw an unopend #6 turnout(ho) with the price tag and started counting what was on the layout-she stopped at 70 and didnt see the bag with the rest of the unopened or the box with the ones waiting to be reused. 

She now calls my tarins "the other woman"

moral... children say 'everything" and dont let your wife see what stuff costs cause even the free stuff is more than she wants to pay.

[redneck64]

My worst train accident

was i just put togethere a bowser challenger steam loco i was so happy put it on the lay out and i ran great i was so proud it was my very first. when to pick it up to put away and i t slipped out of my hands and on to the concreat floor

[arkansasrailfan]

all the layouts have had carpet.
actually, the worst would be when my grandma's storm phobic dog caused severe to minor damage to many pieces of equipment. I have a gp30 from that little disater(all were in cardboard boxes)
the dog is now gone, because her episodes went off the charts, well, would have.

you can posts any don'ts in the hobby no-nos forum(search in the post that I have participated in)
gotta go now

[Guilford Guy]

I was at a modular showing int he next town over. "Bob" was running his Circus Train. and "Jim" was running his Brass ABBA ATSF F7 set and a string of heavyweights. On one of the curves the units disconnected from the rolling stock. "Jim" backed up his F units to couple on, while at the sametime "Bob," distracted by onlookers, wasn't paying attention, as his BLI 4-6-4 and circus train hit5 the tail end of "Jim's" Train. The result wasn't pretty.. Both loco's hit opposite ends at about the same time at the curve. The car buckled outwards and fell the 3-4 feet to the floor, where trucks, truck pins, windowbands, roofs, and car sides proceeded to break off... Miraculously the locos were unharmed, yet I'm positive that any scale person inside would be dead by now.

[FL9]

About 17 years ago I was running on a friend's layout out near Chardon, OH. One of the operating features of his layout is running stone trains loaded with live loads. The cars get loaded with crushed stone (ballast, basically) at a stone loader at one part of the layout and get hauled to another part where they are dumped. Then the empties go back and get loaded again.

Several years ago, the layout owner restricted stone trains to a maximum of 30 cars, but back then, stone trains of 60, 70, or 80 cars were not uncommon. At the time, he used wireless throttles made from Futaba model airplane controllers (per the series of articles in MR 20-25 years ago). These throttles usually worked OK, but for some reason, the florescent lights in the basement sometimes would often interfere with them and make them do strange things.

So on this one night, I'm running a stone train. I had three units and probably around 65 or 70 loaded stone hoppers. I was easing the train down a hill on the layout known as "the gauntlet." The gauntlet was so named because the double track main would not fit through there due to a pilaster in the basement wall, so the two mains track went up the hill on a gauntlet track (some people call that a "gantlet," but I digress). It was probably a 2 or 2.5 percent grade.

I got clearance from the dispatcher to start down the hill and I probably got about 1/4 of the way down when the radio throttle decided to freak out and launch the train down the hill at full throttle. Try as I might, I could not get the throttle to respond. I tried to get to a phone to call the dispatcher to kill the power (the layout was and still is cab control, and we weren't using radios yet), but it was too late.

At the bottom of the gauntlet was a sweeping right hand curve. The locomotives made it around the curve, but everything else went straight ahead, piling up in a giant heap of stone and hopper cars. You could actually see a cloud of dust rising above the wreckage.

About ten minutes with the Shop Vac cleaned up the mess, but I caught a lot of grief over that one, especially since I was just a young kid still in high school at the time. (And it wasn't my fault! Really!)

Jerry

[arkansasrailfan]

I've had a few spills with "real" hopper loads(same kind of accident as previous post)
I've had runaways, where my dad's old layout had a very steep grade...into the river.
But I remember at a train show a Ntrak group had a HUGE wreck!
This train derailed, cars scattered, and then another train hit.
few cars and locos derailed.
Then I remember a train that went off a 45 degree curve. engine flipped, cars derailed at a whopping 90 mph!
then a train took out a tunnel(WASN't glued down.

[leejax01]

I was trying some different consisting sets with locos with and without sound. I set up some temporary EZ track around the dining table...harmless enough you may think...read on.

 I had 2 Atlas BNSF H3 8-40CWs with a sound lead engine sitting on the outside track with about 20 cars or so. On the inside track I had a set of SD45-2 with a sound lead unit. They are from Genesis and I had way too much momentum and the lead engine broke free going nearly full speed and as it was a double loop, it rear ended itself along side the BNSFs. Suprisingly, no real damage to the rear ended cars and the SD45-2. I walked over to rerail everything. This is where fate kinda got mad as the Dash 8 escaped destruction and decided to take things into its own hands  and this is where the story takes a "Final Destination" twist.

 Remember when I said that the track wrapped around the dining table? Well, someone put a CD holder on the table...on top of a pile of manilla folders. Well the CD holder was one made back when CDs first came out and probably weighed 5 pounds easy. With the folders as slippery as a wet pig, I bumped the dining table on the way back to the controller and all I heard was a loud crash and no more sound from the Dash 8. I turned around to see carnage as the edge of the CD holder crushed the cab of the Dash and it flipped it and derailed almost everything else.

I held the Dash 8 in my hands like the dad from "A Christmas Story" was holding his broken leg lamp. I had to push the roof of the cab back out and the windshield still wears the crack til today. everything else kinda worked itself out with EXTREME pressure and a little cement to make it all stay put. I also cracked a tooth off of a gear in the front truck(not sure how that happened) and it had to be replaced. That loco is a keeper now it is still leading my BNSF consists.

[BCSJ]

Sob. Some idiot (who I don't want to admit to) left a box of track work supplies sitting on the tracks. And another idiot (who looked alot like the first idiot) decided to do some video of a nice long train coming through a tunnel. Unfortunately the nice long train had to be backed into the tunnel before it could come out of it. The nice long train also had a nice Challenger Imports brass C30 caboose on the end of it. The nice long train was so long the caboose backed into the box of track work supplies (sniff...) and decided to play Evel Knievel onto the concrete floor. Sob.

It's never been the same since...

Why is it alwasy the most expensive or best detailed/weathered piece of equipment that hits the floor? (like my super weathered/detailed SP 50' box car that got accidently shoved off the end of a spur track and onto the floor. Someday that boxcar will make a return to the layout laying in the undergrowth below a high bridge with a pair of legs sticking out wearing white and red striped stockings and ruby slippers...

Grumble. Grumble.

Charlie (now where did I leave my brain this time) Comstock 

[Virginian]

I still think bouncing a brand new brass N&W streamlined K2a off the concrete stands alone.  The only positive is it wasn't painted yet.  That was my first... and last, under the table reversing loop.

[arkansasrailfan]

Big Boy went Big Uh-OH. So you see, the cab roof came off, The rear engine went to crap, (3rd repair), and all because I dropped on the hardwood floor, which there is only 3ft by 3ft of it. Also, BOTH of my turbines couplers broke, and so my UP fleet in now in ruins(sort of)

[jon grant]

This is funny, in a sick sort of way

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC8VzVmNPOI

 

Jon

[caldreamer]

oscaletrains:

  My gauge as to death or injury is based on the damage done (e.g. derailed engines, cabooses, passenger cars and how they are located after the wreck).  It i quite subjective, but use your good judgement as to injury or death.  In my previous post on this subject (see page 1), we determined the casualties by he fact that the lead engine was on the caboose, how the impact had affected the caboose (pancaked into derailed cars) and the  position of second engine relative to the first and the caboose.  Tom, whose layout we wee running on, got quite a ribbing for some time for commiting that goof..

[arkansasrailfan]

That video is anti-model railroad