The worst I've seen was at a train show. On a big DCC modular layout. Two engineers miscommunicated and the result was a head-on collision of 2 trains, about 15 cars each. There wasn't a lot of damage, fortunately. Mostly, bruised egos and broken couplers.
Phil, I'm not a rocket scientist; they are my students.
Back during the days of the old Division 6 Railroad Clubhouse...begot by Central Ohio N-Trak for several years after....
I was running my "Gateway Limited" Cincinnati Central Passenger train. Going at club layout speed (rare for me, loved to highball in those days), a Union Pacific Intermodal was right behind.
I got near the Coshocton, Ohio modeled yard....The UP Highball was right behind, a switch was missed.
Bam, right behind my observation car. Crash, containers and trailers all over the floor.
That was when the Division 6 ran things down there. The yardmaster was so mad!
I paid a premium price for 12 Intermountain KCS grain hopper kits. A friend in my model railroad club agreed to assemble the kits for me because I am not too skilled in this area. When the kits were completed I assembled them into a unit train and sent them on the layout. There were only two places on the layout where the scenery was unfinished and open to the floor. One area was a 1.5% grade on a curve, very slow speed but one of the grain car trucks failed.....and four of the new cars went into the canyon!!! (42" drop to a concrete floor)
JIM
Jim, Modeling the Kansas City Southern Lines in HO scale.
I'm having a heck of a time explaining to my 5 year old the difference between the steamers at the Colorado Railroad Museum ( which we visited in October ) and Dad's "little engines" in the basement!
"Why can't we get a big one?" is all I hear!
I was running trains at a friends house. He had a DCC layout. One of the other engineers stopped his train for a red signal. The owner of the layout was not watching and ran through a red signal and into the rear of the other train. The caboose and 5 cars derailed as well as both of the engines. It was decided that the engineer and fireman, as well as the conductor and brakeman in the caboose were killed, due to he nature of the wreck. What a mess and quite a few laughts as well.
On my old layout, I was running a Bachmann 0-6-0. The track was only 'bout 1/2 inch from the edge. So I was runnin my switcher (0-6-0) at about 60 scale mph, I flew off the edge, & bye-bye! IT WAS MY ONLY STEAM ENGINE AT THE TIME!
- Luke
Modeling the Southern Pacific in the 1960's-1980's
Dr. Frankendiesel aka Scott Running BearSpace Mouse for president!15 year veteran fire fighterCollector of Apple //e'sRunning Bear EnterprisesHistory Channel Club life member.beatus homo qui invenit sapientiam
At the club at the top of the helix (6 turns) while pulling 30 hoppers the first coupler (Athearn metal clip failure) of the first car came loose. The locos surged forward as the hoppers and caboose whent backwards near the speed of light out of the helix down the long grade (2% 40 feet long) into the tunnel and hidden track. Im still missing a hopper from that wreck. The hack was in pieces and 1 hopper wrecked beond repair. I woder what the conducter and rear brakeman where thinking while running a scale thousand MPH. When are we gonna get HO scale air brakes? Wouldnt that be fun to hook up?
Pete
I pray every day I break even, Cause I can really use the money!
I started with nothing and still have most of it left!
But were any of your accidents caught on tape like these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PweRsxbN3c
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5eCPWpEAPw
That is a $4,000 Aster (live steam) USRA Light Mikado locomotive.
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
I went to a MRR club once a few years back, they had a kid who ran his Thomas real fast, while I was using a borrowed Frisco Geep and went fairly slow.
No one thought that the coupler on the thomas could connect with a kadee, but it did. Turns out that when he rammed the rear of my train, he knocked several of the coupler springs lose. I was left with 4 cars out of a 20+ car train....
Vincent
Wants: 1. high-quality, sound equipped, SD40-2s, C636s, C30-7s, and F-units in BN. As for ones that don't cost an arm and a leg, that's out of the question....
2. An end to the limited-production and other crap that makes models harder to get and more expensive.
Back on my last layout when it was 4 x 20 feet, the mainline ran along the long edges of the layout (not sure what my dad was thinking when he did that) about an inch from the edges. One day my brother was running trains with me. However, back then, he only ran trains at one speed: the speed of sound. I kept telling him to slow the train down, but he never listened to me back then and kept the train cruising. Well, as the train came out of the one 180-degree curve, the engine (an Atlas SD24) flipped off the track and went airborne. The cars had uncoupled and stayed on the track. I remember the engine doing a nice slow arc off at a slight upward angle and back down and landing on the carpetted floor. Amazingly, there was no damage, and the engine continues to run to this day.
At the model railroad club I used to belong to, we had some rather spectacular wrecks. In one case, we had a train gaining on another train that was going into a storage siding. As the caboose cleared the points for the switch to the siding, one of the club members threw the switch for the mainline, forgetting that it also killed the power for the siding. As a result, the second train, now without the first train sharing the power from the transformer, surged ahead, plowing into the caboose, which went sideways along with a couple cars ahead of it and the locomotives of the second train. The main source of crashes on our layout was a six-foot scratchbuilt wooden trestle where our three mainline tracks narrowed to two with the inside two tracks running on a gauntlet track. We often had the trains spaced apart on those two tracks so that they wouldn't get to the bridge at the same time, but that didn't always work. About once a day, there would be a loud crash, and we'd have to stop everything and clean up the mess.
Of course, my new layout has had its share of derailments, like this one the first day I began running trains after completing my mainline.
Kevin
http://chatanuga.org/WLMR.html
http://chatanuga.org/RailPage.html
B:
Respect the scram switch. Did you ever see MODEL RAILROADING UNLIMITED?
R. T. POTEET wrote:My worst Model train accident was when I bought my first copies of Model Railroader and Railroad Model Craftsman way back in 1962. This hobby has been twisting my arm ever since and I've spent thousands of dollars trying to recover from that horrible accident!
From the far, far reaches of the wild, wild west I am: rtpoteet