anyone have any wierd layout train wrecks? I had 2 in one day. First, an accurail 89' autorack became disengaged from its front truck when going down to a lower track. The pin had come out 3/4 of the way back from where the accident occurred. Second my big boy fell over on its side after hitting the entrance portal of a tunnel. any other contributions would be appreciated. jaijef
On my "Desktop and Drawing Table Lines", I picked up a drinking glass this morning that was sitting on a cd case, which was used to support some of the Unitrack. The CD case stuck to the glass, so when I picked up the glass, it pulled the track up sending a GP9 down onto my switch controls, and several other cars off the rails. Also, I have the dangedest time getting the MT 1015 couplers on some MDC hoppers adjusted right, so they often come loose and run away (it's a slight grade going up from the desk to the drawing table).
I've got a brass GN 48 seat coach with a huge dent in the end from a trip off the big bridge at the BSME . The car was brand new, hadn't even been painted yet when it derailed in the tunnel and then picked the gaurd rail on the bridge and down it went. Hydrocal rocks are just as hard as real rocks and the rersults were not pretty. Fortunatly it was just the end of the car that was damaged and it's barely noticible now that it has been finished.
Well a club that I go to has a mushroom layout the top level is about 7' high. The upper level was completed first and has a connection for a continuous run on the upper level. Anyhow when construction was starting on the lower level someone must have done a test run. Unfortunately they forgot to set the turnout back. Later someone ran a train and it headed down the uncompleted track to the lower level and to the ground. Luckly the floor was only concrete
Here's an innocent and deadly mistake I made. I had just completed a neat little N scale loop-layout that had just a 6 foot loop and some sidings with several switches. My scenery was dynamite! It was an apartment layout up high on top of two 3 foot dressers. I had my shirt sleeves rolled up with my cuffs hanging down and reached in to adjust something just as my freight with ten cars or so rolled past my arm right on the edge of the layout. I pulled back and caught my only (RATS!) engine, a 2 two month old Atlas GP9 and it crashed to the floor with great force. It fell over 3 feet onto carpet. The freight cars somehow stayed on the layout but at least half of them derailed. The front coupler broke off the engine, the handrails on one side were bend beyond repair (the head end ones were found weeks later somewhere under the layout, in the most hard to reach corner. I spent an hour with a flashlight looking for it too. I guess the cannister vaccuum picked it up when it got stuck on the brush), and the engine sputtered at a scale 5 MPH until I got out and purchased a couple more engines. It wasn't the height but the force that killed my GP9. I'm not sure the headlight worked anymore either, so let's just say it didn't. LOL. The poor engine would have faired better if it had fallen on some nice soft concrete! LESSON: Don't work with rolled up sleeves! I guess I yanked my arm back as not to hit the train but caught it anyway............BIG MISTAKE. Oy Vey! Whata KLUTZ!
We had a Regional NMRA Convention in Noblesville Indiana in Aprol of 2001. One of the vendors at the Sunday Train Show had a lot of brass for sale. I went to pick up a SD40T-2 and the box caught on something and the engine did a 1 1/2 gainer to the concrete floor. I had not intended to buy anything that day but when I break something I expect myself to buy it. When I ran my own business I expected broken things to be purchased by the breaker of the item or if your kid broke I expect you to take care of it. The damage to the engine looked severe. Bent frame, twisted shell and who knew what else was wrong with it. The dealer did give me a really really good price because I got him into the show just two days before it happened. A good friend took the SD home and called me three days laterr ans told me to come and pick up my engine. He had repaired it so the only noticable damage is the scuffed paint which I am not sure if I will ever repair. I am the proud owner of a Key Brass SD40T-2 that runs as well as any othe engine that I have including my new Atlas B8-40''s.
I walked into my layout room one day and immediately noticed that my MDC two truck Shay that I had painstakingly detailed was not where I had left it. Also, several cars were tipped over. I had discovered our cat had gotten up onto the layout in the past and figured she had done it again. But where was my Shay? I expected to see it in a dozen pieces on the concrete floor, but it wasn't there. I looked up and there it was, suspended about halfway down on some of the wiring under the roadbed. The only damage was a couple of the detail parts had come off. What a relief!! Needless to say, I shot the cat (only kidding).
I have had one or two of our cats on my layout but now keep the door closed so the cats can't get in. That is the nice thing about building the room for the layout I out in everything I wanted for the layout
The worst wreck I have had, was on a layout built under a pier and beam house. I had driven stakes into the dirt, and laid Tru-Scale wood roadbed on top of them just above the (real) dirt. I had a mainline that went all around just inside the foundation, about 28 feet by 38 feet with 60 inch radius curves at all four corners, so I could pull some very long trains. The slope of the ground gave me a 2% ruling grade along one of the 38 foot straights, and 3% down on the opposite one. I had a wood tressle, with a 30" radius "S" curve, at the lower end of the 3%, just before it made the corner. Got the picture? The lights I had were not the brightest, so I could use the headlight on an engine to see. While drifting down grade with an HO HobbyTown E-8 pulling a string of passenger cars, I failed to notice a large black beetle that had crawled out onto this tressle. As the engine entered the first end of the tressle, the beetle must have seen it coming and ducked his head. (A big black stink bug!) I saw this beetle just as the cowcatcher glided up over the bug's back, and off into mid air! Down she went head first into the soft dirt, pulling all the cars with it. I spent the next several weeks cleaning and oiling all the trucks and the power truck! The bug did not survive the mob violence that followed the wreck!
The first wreck posted, I was there, it was on my layout. Since I have temporary track, the flex sections are not tacked down. As trains come and go over the course of a session, the track can begin to creep a little. This is what happened to the Big Boy Jai was running. As for the car carrier losing it's truck, it was a friction pin mount. A superb kit, but I cannot keep that pin in place for long. Looks like a trip to the backshop for some 2-56 upgrades.
I kind of had a little accident yesturday. I wanted to see how the height of the trackword was going to look so I ballanced the subroadbed on a 1x4. I still wanted to get a better idea so I decided get out two locomotives and sit them on the roadbed. I admired them for a few minutes then went and picked one of them up. Bad idea. The wight of the single locomotive not ballanced out by the second cause the roadbed to flip over on the 1x4. The loco fell. Luckly it was going to land on a piece of plywood sitting lower on the benchwork. Unfortunately I tried to catch it. which would have been ok except that I was too slow. Instead I puched it into the wall, past the plywood and onto the foor. Oops. luckly damage was minor mostly just a few abrasions.
One day while running trains...I remember it well...I was at my old club in Baton Rouge, N-Trak-Three tracks. Anyway, we left the trains running while we ran up the side walk to a Sandwich shop. When we got back, a mass of people waiting for a movie, was pressed against the picture window. We wondered what was wrong. We could hear the trains running. A few more moments...we could still hear them running but no trains. The crowd was still pressed against the glass...Piled up on the far side, ( the side with the glass window...) was all three trains! The loco's where still on the track and making all sorts of train running sounds. We took a great picture, which I don't have, but it was TOO COOL! [ 30. July 2002, 00:28: Message edited by: Maxwell Plant ]
Back in 1986 I was participating at a Great American Train Show in Kansas City, and was the sole representative of our club (Topeka N Scalers) in a very largs NTRAK layout. I was in charge of running a long unit coal train. Somewhere along the line I was told to stop my train, which I did- very suddenly. I had N scale coal hoppers piled up all OVER the place, and fouling all three tracks!!! None hit the floor, but I got a stern lecture on handling long trains. Next time I stopped that train, I was doing it niiiiice and slooow. Outside of that incident, being it was my only exposure to running on a large NTRAK layout, I had a pretty good time.
I have had a couple of weird things happen. I don't know if they can be considered wrecks. Once I was coming over the summit of the club layout when the coupler gave way about 1/3 of the way through the train. Of course the power took off faster down the grade. I didn't notice this until the power was near the bottom and the rest of the train was coming down behind it, about 30 car lengths back. Good old momemtum got the rest of the train over the summit. So I just matched the speed of both parts of the train and coupled on the fly. Later investigation showed a missing coupler spring. Now as for tricks being pulled during shows Sometimes when trains go through our back room out of the public view, some cars have a tendancy to be added or deleted, or even better, the power consist gets changed. Warnning don't do this to a person who is stressed out or has a bad sense of humor. [ 02. August 2002, 00:25: Message edited by: ajy6b ]
One time I ran my Athearn SW1000 and about 5 cars into my friends cat who had actually fallen asleep on the track. Never seen a cat jump up and run so fast.
On my new layout I am building, I had finished one line of the two main line tracks and was running trains so I could tweak the track into perfect shape. I had two SD 7's lashed together pulling 25 cars. They had made several rounds on the layout without any problems going up and down grades, through S curves and so forth. I had the urge to visit Mrs Jones and was out of the room about 20 Minutes. When I came back I noticed that my train looked different. The engines were all there as well as the caboose. Then I started counting cars as the train went by. There were only 19 cars behing the engine all running fine. It took me quite a while to figure that one out. When the train started down the grade, a pin dropped out of a truck causing a derailment. All 6 cars went over the side onto the carpet. The other cars caught up with the engines and hooked up and kept right on going as if nothing had happend. When I checked the floor I saw cars, trucks and wheels all over under the bench. Luckely, no couplers were broken. I just had fun assembling those cars.
These are great stories! Now I know who NOT to buy stuff from on ebay The following by Watash just cracked me up! My worst train wreck was on an HO switching layout I built about five years ago. The layout was 1 foot wide by 7feet in length. At the far end of the layout the track ran right up to the edge and I hadn't shortened it for the bumper yet. I was running the switcher to that part of the layout when my wife decided to "goose" me. My hand jerked the throttle and the switcher responded by flying off the end of the layout taking two box cars with it. The box cars lost most of their wheels and broke one coupler. The switcher lost a couple, rails, and cracked the shell!
