Today on the flat door pacific railroad, a union pacific train derailed and plummeted a few hundred feet to the soft and bed like bottom of a cliff. The locomotive, a C40-8W, sustained no damage however 2 passenger cars, continued over a second cliff, which has a harder bottom, much like concrete, and were lightly damaged. i dont know why when a train falls off the tracks it always falls to the side that will most likely cause the most damage to something. but it does! What is your worst train wreck you've had on your model railroad?
A friend once worked with me to calculate what the effects of a derail like that would be, were the HO trains involved full prototypes. He even worked out how many joules of energy would be applied. We estimated that the locomotive would have finally stopped moving after creating about a four-foot-deep carter... in the subway underneath the sidewalk where it hit.
I use to have a 2' x 7' HO switching layout. One of the spurs didn't have any form of bumper at its terminus. As I was operating, my wife thought it would be funny to "goose" me. When she did, I jerked the throttle and the loco with car in tow flew off the end of the layout and went crashing to the floor! The loco shell cracked and the front knuckle broke off, the cars trucks and wheels scattered in all directions.
I have been fortunate that there have not been any great derailments with my N scale layout. But, I run a G scale Christmas lay out around the tree. A few years ago I was running the train and while doing so was also dumb enough to intentionally stir up our potbellied pig. Needless to say I was able to get both going in circles at a real good speed. Then as the train came around the curve and the pig came around the chair they met. Wiped the engine and all cars clean of the track. I spent the next several hours disassembling my ten-wheeler steam engine, repairing the broken motor mounts, reinstalling and aligning the motor and reassembling the whole thing. Oh, and the pig, he has never again gone near the train.
I had a brand new brass GN 48 seat coach on the track for the first time at the BSME club when it went flying. Flying? you ask? Yes, flying, right off the 4 foot high trestle and into the plaster rocks surrounding the lake below. It put one hell of a dent in the end of the car, but after I got it painted it's not too obvious. Oops
My cousin (who was 8 at the time) did a really good job handeling my trains on My Old HO layout, I was relaying a section of track on the other sideand before I knew it, there was a 35 car freight rolling well over 40 right at me!, need less to say the lead engine went straight off the rails (sharp curve) and across and corn field, through a Bar and grille and "smashed into the sky." (backdrop). not much damage I got lucky had to replace the plow, but that was it. Only I run my trains from now on.
My accident was not a my the RR per se. I was at a train show at an NMRA Regional Convention. I started to pick up a Key Brass SD40-2 and the box it was in caught on another box abnd the SD40 did a one and a half gainer to the concrete floor. That was the last time I have picked up a brass engine and after a few very minor repairs the SD40 runs like clock work on my CEE Line RR. I am of the belief that if you break something while looking at it you are the proud owner of said broken item.
On my layout I have a DCC Test Track, which I named "Dead man Curve" because I did put in a sharp turn in the Test Track. Anyway I decided to give a reason why I named it "Dead Man Curve" so what I did was I brought a really cheap N&W steam engine (My layout is all steam), and I ran it at the highest speed and I jump the track at the curve, luckily for me I put down glue right where it fell. I know it was cruel but hey I wanted something eye catching on my layout. I also weathered the engine to make it look like it been there for a long time.
