Model train wreck ?

[Guilford Guy]

We had prototypical Guilford operations on the club last december... Dick was running his pair of Canadian Widecabs. I rolled around the curve to see his train stopped so I stopped my train, and walked ahead. What I saw was pretty amazing... all by itself, the lead widecab managed to flop onto its side...

[GraniteRailroader]

Don't forget that a "major" wreck might be as simple as a boxcar that derailed and ripped out a switch and a 100' section of track along the way until the crew noticed.

I had a car derail on me a few weeks ago... Picked the points of a switch, went over the frog, and ripped out three 40' sections of rail. 

Closed off access to two fuel dealers as well as a feed mill and put the passing track out of service. One switch, three customers.

[AntonioFP45]

New Haven,

I hear ya! That is a lot of water.

Any of you guys thinking about creating a similar scene? Floods are an unfortunate and very common problems here in the U.S; especially in areas near the Mississippi Delta.

[Flashwave]

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.

[V&AL]

 

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:

 

[trainman6446]

do landlocked  ie stuck in an abandoned siding  count?  If so i have included an old mdc 36' boxcar sitting on a track in back of an abandoned biulding.

[New Haven I-5]

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!"

 

That is lot of woodland scenics water or Epoxy!

[New Haven I-5]

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.

 

That looks so real!

[chatanuga]

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

[Anonymous]

There's one club which I have visited which has an old wooden boxcar under some bridges. the club models somewhere from the 80's to modern day, so that boxcar has been there for a while. On my layout I have an area where a wreck occured a long time ago; all the freightcars are gone, but there's still some old ladders, bits of metal, and a broken truck. (the freightcar wheelset type, not the road vehicle)

[stebbycentral]

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. 

[doctorwayne]

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 

[AntonioFP45]

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!"

 

[dinwitty]

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...

[V&AL]

"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.

[PASMITH]

The San Diego Model Railroad Museum has a small diorama of a train wreck which is very well done. As I recall the era depicted is early 1900's. I also recall seeing a diorama in an old issue of the Narrow Gauge Gazette which depicted a boiler house ( Not locomotive) explosion. This was very detailed which is common to most models and scenes found in the Gazette.

Peter Smith, Memphis

OOps, I forgot John Allen and his "momentous" great pig and cattle car wreck of 1948 on page 67 of "Model Railroading with John Allen" Also shown on the page is his Varney advertisement where a train destroys a vehicle at a grade crossing.

[Great Western Rwy fan]

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..

[Alantrains]

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 

[R. T. POTEET]

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.

[rogertra]

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.

 

[tomikawaTT]

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)

[loathar]

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!

[Guilford Guy]

[Tjsingle]

super cool

[Bone]

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.

[jguess733]

Need junk? Why not grab some old tyco cars or inexpensive old BB kits off ebay, weather em up and take a propane torch to them? Ten to fifteen years ago MR ran an article on how to distress a plastic model to make it look like it's been through a wreck. You simply heat it up with a propane torch just enough to make the plastic soft and use an no. 11 blade to cut tears in the metal. You can pretty much use any type of instrument you want to deform the plastic to make it dented. It's a very strait forward process.

[Packer]

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.

[loathar]

It's fairly difficult to model bent, mangled plastic equipment.

[WCfan]

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.