Smashing Pennies Via Train

[CNW 6000]

I heard a story about a kid putting a spike on the Amtrak NE corridor.

When the GG-1 hit the spike it shot out from under the wheel and went right through the kids chest killing him.

I don't know if this is true,but I belive it could have happened.

 

Carl T.

Sounds like an 'old wives tale' to me but with what is 'possible' it may be just that.

[arbfbe]

Old wives tale?  Perhaps the part about the fatality.  I have been on a few trains where miscreants have loaded the rails with spikes, anchors and tie plates.  Since the steel does not compress these track components are launched out ahead of the train.  The metal projectiles go through bushes and willows like shrapnel.  Anyone struck by these projectiles would certainly be injured and perhaps killed.

The softer metals are flattened by the locomotive wheels and are not commonly "squirted out" but when the stick to the wheel tread the centrifugal forces will indeed throw them from the top of the wheel when it rolls around.  I doubt they ever broke out the station windows and stuck in the wall 90' away but they could effect soft tissue damage to nearby observers.

So slow speed, as in walking pace, with a loco consist, supervised by someone from the crew seems safe enough.  High speed on your own is just asking for problems.

[SchemerBob]

A couple years ago my dad put a couple pennies on the Norfolk Southern tracks in Hannibal, Missouri, right before a ballast train (I think loaded) went through. I didn't see them smashed because I was videotaping the train a couple blocks away, but both pennies were recovered. One of them was smashed so much it had a bigger diameter than a half dollar.

I think many people put pennies on the railroad tracks to see just how powerful these trains are. Even a car or semi probably wouldn't flatten a penny.

[espeefoamer]

I have smashed many pennies on the tracks when I was younger.I never caused a derailment,never had a penney embed itself in a nearby wall.I have pennies smashed by the 4449,and by the train at Knott's Berry Farm.

[J. Edgar]

I heard a story about a kid putting a spike on the Amtrak NE corridor.

When the GG-1 hit the spike it shot out from under the wheel and went right through the kids chest killing him.

I don't know if this is true,but I belive it could have happened.

 

Carl T.

Sounds like an 'old wives tale' to me but with what is 'possible' it may be just that.

 maybe a call to Mythbusters on this one......

[SWChicagoRailfan]

My girlfriend put several coins on the rails at Rochelle and recovered every single one of them. It's pretty cool actually. But I guess I was stupid for letting her go by the tracks with trespassing laws and all. Live and learn.

[RABEL]

I like your album. Berwyn and most of the Metra Stations are a wiser choice

for flattening coins. Lavernge Ave has/would be my choice.

[spikejones52002]

I have done that for more years than I want to admit.

I have pennys the look like an egg, some that are 3 to 4 times the size of the orginial. Many just nicked.

Some time I had to seach some were right next to where I placed them. A very few stayed on railhead.

Many Many never found.

Twice I taped the penny on the rail. The tape became part of the penny. Both were forced off the rail. 

On RFD-TV in OLD W.M. RR video I had a big laugh when a bunch of kids ran off their porch and put items on rail just a head of the train and ran back on the porch.

Back in the 50s. We use to go to ChinaTown, Chicago. During Chinese New Years days. The street cars ran down Wentworth. !00% of the rail was covered with fire crackers. As soon as the trolley passed. The rails were covered again.

[scottychaos]

Probably no one has ever been killed by a flying penny or railroad spike..

but there are a few documented cases of people being killed after putting pennies on the railroad tracks...killed by TRAINS while waiting for their pennies! 

http://www.snopes.com/science/train.htm

 

Scot

[TimChgo9]

How about a shopping cart??

Short story:  My friend Chris and I were your typical kids, we liked trains, and his house wasn't far from the ICG's Freeport Sub that ran through Hillside, IL. Anyway, we were "up at the tracks" one fine summer day, waiting for a westbound freight train to come through. (Westbound trains were visible forever, you could see healights as far east as North Riverside) as the train drew closer, a couple of kids from the neihborhood had shown up with a shopping cart, that they had taken from the Hillside Mall, about 3 or 4 blocks away. Their announced intention was to push the cart into the train as it went through the crossing. Chris and I argued with them, but they went ahead and did it anyway.... The freight train came through, (about 40 mph, I think) and as the lead locomotive passed by, the kids shoved the cart with all they had, and it was hit, caught, and dragged by the fourth or fifth locomotive on the train, after the train had cleared, the two kids went to go find their cart.  They found the remains just down the tracks, and dragged it back to the crossing we were at, the cart, from it's appearance, may have been dragged under the train, or something, as it was totally mangled. The kids that did it went away laughing, and were talking about doing it again with more carts.......I don't know if they ever did.....

I of course never did anything like that, but I am guilty of the penny thing......

[miniwyo]

I think we are ALL guilty of putting pennys on the tracks. The last time the Challenger was here I placed a penny ontop of a quarter on put it on there. The penny fused with the quarter and is still as thin as a single coin would be. When I as young we used to take pennys over to the south pass branch line and even if we knew there wasnt going to be a train that day, we would use a small bit of scotch tape just to keep them from vibrating or blowing off. We would go collect them the next day after we saw the train pass. Never lost one......

[Erie Lackawanna]

I remember a Cub Scout trip (so I must have been nine, prob 1971?) to the Morris County Central RR.  This was a tourist steam train that used to run in Northern New Jersey (sure miss it).  All the kids got pennies from their dads and put them on the track.  My dad, being an ex railroad man, wouldn't let me participate.  My memory's shaky on this, but I wouldn't be surprised if he warned some of the other fathers not to do it either.

Didn't matter in the end.  Whatever track the pennies were on didn't see another train while we were there and everyone collected their unflattened pennies and went home.

[Convicted One]

A penny on top of a nickle is more fun, looking at how they get squished together.

Putting the innards from a fusee into the rail head will sometimes cause a series of small explosions, like fire crackers. And putting an old spike into the flange groove on a diamond is just insane

NONE of which have I done since i was about 10 years old

[Anonymous]

Reading this thread brings back many memories of doing just that..!

 I have posted a link to a photo essay that starts off with placing pennies on a rail track..!

 here it is again..  http://thephotojournals.com/GeoffCronje/HelloDolly/HelloDolly_1.htm

[railroadnut675]

HeHeHe.....

     My dad says he did it when he was little and I live close to a CSX shortline, so ...  one day I rode my bike down to the track and placed Mr. Lincoln on the rail, vowing to return in the next day or 3. The next day, I was riding with my mom and saw a boxcar train at the grade crossing. The day after that I got back to the tracks, to find that the penny was gone;behind the rail. I picked it up, put it in my pocket and rode home. However, after the CSX SD-40, seveal boxcars, fuel cars and covered hoppers, I couldn't make heads or tails of the thing.

Next experiment: flatten quarters nickels and dime's

Next experiment after that:place them all in a line and have them flat-welded together  

 

 

[squeeze]

When I was knee high to a grasshopper (50's) someone told me that if you put a penny in front of the driver wheels on a steamer, when it was stopped, that the engine wouldn't be able to overcome the penny to get started. Is there any truth to that effect?

SQ

[tree68]

When I was knee high to a grasshopper (50's) someone told me that if you put a penny in front of the driver wheels on a steamer, when it was stopped, that the engine wouldn't be able to overcome the penny to get started. Is there any truth to that effect?

SQ

I suspect it would take something a little more substantial, but they did use chain to chock the wheels on steamers...

[coborn35]

I remember my friend really wanted a penny flatten. He wanted a penny flatten so bad he snuck into the railyard here in town and right infront of the locomotive, with the crew in it, he put the penny there. Now that's STUPIED right there.(I saw this from a public street) Later he went back to his bike and rode off and put some quarters and pennys on the track by the crossing. He never got his flatten penny. In spring me and my friend where joking around saying it would be fused to the tracks. After looking around the crossing a while we found it flew about 10 feet to the other crossing. (Didn't land on the other track. )

I believe the word you are looking for is stupid.

[B.Erdmann]

 i did it today but i couldnt find the pennys once again.

 

 

[spokyone]

Here is video of pennies causing a derailment, and the subsequent investigation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC8VzVmNPOI

 

[CopCarSS]

Here is video of pennies causing a derailment, and the subsequent investigation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC8VzVmNPOI

 

That is classic! Thanks for posting!

[csmith9474]

Here is video of pennies causing a derailment, and the subsequent investigation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC8VzVmNPOI

 

That is classic! Thanks for posting!

I have seen that several times before, but couldn't help myself and watched it again. Thanks for the post!!

[Chris30]

Now thats a funny video... Just don't let any television network execs see it.

CC

[Train Guy 3]

Other than the fact that smashing pennies can cause possible injury and that you are most likely tresspassing to do it... isn't the smashing defacing of government property?

[RABEL]

Other than the fact that smashing pennies can cause possible injury and that you are most likely tresspassing to do it... isn't the smashing defacing of government property?

I don't believe Money is government property. Money belongs to who holds it.

[csmith9474]

Other than the fact that smashing pennies can cause possible injury and that you are most likely tresspassing to do it... isn't the smashing defacing of government property?

Smashing the pennies is perfectly legal unless you try to do something fradulent with them after they are smashed.

[Anonymous]

as kids, we used to lay used spikes in the flange grooves of diamonds. Some of those were real conversation pieces.

[Anonymous]

That is the problem with pennys on the track.  They may or may not be addictive, but they are the "gateway drug" to spikes.

[tree68]

Having completed the "ground work" (running the EOT from one end of the train to the other and making appropriate adjustments in anglecocks) during one of our runarounds, I was waiting for the locomotive crew to finish so I could do the brake test when one of the passengers in our baggage "open air" car spotted three pennies on the passing track and asked me to get them.  Since the locomotive was already past (having run over the pennies, possibly for a second or third time), I picked them up and gave them to him.  The mystery is who put them there, since it wasn't anyone on our crew, and the passengers stay on the train during that runaround....  I'm sure they were disappointed to find their flattened coins missing.

[traintownofcowee]

I always wanted to put coins on tracks and let trains run over them.

My dream is to have a coin ran over by 4449, 844, 3985, and lots more others.

But I haven't done it once yet.

Im planning on placing coins on the tracks this next weekend when I go to the Great Smoky Mountains Railfest.