I came across this WWII training film for sabotaging trains. Much more difficult than one might think (30" gaps in both rails did not work). I found it interesting and really makes you think about momentum.
That really surprised me, I thought for sure it would have been on its side the first time. I wonder how much of a gap todays diesels and cars would withstand.
30" is about 3/8" in HO. My models won’t jump a gap that size!
When you read the story of the Great Locomotive Chase from the Civil War, the guys on The General were surprised at what obstacles and damage to rail the Texas and other pursuit engines were able to overcome.
Dave Nelson
While cutting a 30 inch gap in both rails might not do it, completely removing one rail section will - and did in northern Arizona.
Just as ‘difficult’ and even more effective - cut both rails and offset them by about 6 inches, then re-spike.
Of course, if done in signalled territory this would set off all kinds of alarms. The first thing to arrive would probably be a SWAT team, not a train.
There was one case where a Rio Grande train climbed off the rail in a blizzard and ran some distance down a frozen dirt road. The engineer braked to a stop when an expected signal failed to appear. When asked if he had noticed anything, he commented that the ride had seemed unusually smooth!
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Interesting:
I’d say that the OSS should have contacted the French film director Renee Clement–he made a film called LA BATTAILE DU RAIL about the French Resistance in WWII that showed all sorts of nifty ways to put a train on the ground, LOL!
After seeing that film, now, I’m not that worried about a couple of expansion sections on my own track. [:P]
Tom [:)]
If the military needs some pointers on how to derail a train, maybe they should have come talk to some model railroaders. We don’t seem to have much problem accomplishing it[:D]
Interesting film. The key to derailment in the real world is gauge, spread it wider or closer and the train will pop off the track. Make a crater and it’ll derail for sure.
Cut one three foot section from the outside of a curve and see how fast the loco hits the dirt. That’s the way many of the French resistance teams did it.
I agree with Jeff. Makes me wonder what year this ‘confidential’ OSS film was made–by 1943-44, the French Maquis was derailing German trains all over France just by taking out a series of bolts and sleepers. Heck, even in Hollywood during that era, directors knew that if you wanted to wreck a train, you unspiked the rail, spread it, covered the joint up with a piece of brush and just waited for it to happen, LOL!
Tom [:)]
Probably the best theatrical film ever made on this topic was John Frankenheimer’s The Train, released in 1964 and starring Burt Lancaster as Labiche, a train crewman and member of the French Resistance who is assigned to prevent a train loaded with priceless French art stolen from the Louvre from making it out of France.
It has one of the most spectacular train wreck sequences ever committed to film (one camera was damaged in shooting the wreck scene, but fortunately, it was being operated remotely and no one was hurt).
See the trailer (including the wreck sequence) here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cco8EyBPt2s&feature=related
The movie itself pops up on TV from time to time. It’s definitely worth a look!
I agree absolutely–THE TRAIN is one of the best, most exciting WWII dramas I’ve ever seen. Absolutely incredible excitement, and not a Hollywood ‘model’ in the film.
To re-iterate, this superb film was also inspired by the Renee Clement 1945 French film LA BATTAILE DU RAIL, which is filmed in a semi-documentary style (portions of it during the German occupation) and concerns the efforts of the “Maquis”–French Resistance–to stop German rail traffic to the Normandy Front. BATTAILE DU RAIL, like THE TRAIN, concerns itself with the ‘details’ of sabotauge, and is in itself a taut, terrific railroad film–it also features the derailment of an actual train hauling German tanks to the ‘Front’, which remains the most incredible train wreck I’ve ever seen captured on film–it goes on forever!
The spectacular railroad yard bombing in THE TRAIN was supervised by Lee Zavits, a Hollywood special-effects expert (he burned Atlanta for GONE WITH THE WIND) with the co-operation of the French National Railways, who were going to re-lay the tracks in the yard outside of Paris. The director, John Frankenheimer was allowed to destroy the rail yard for the film, and after that, the railway company came in and relaid the tracks to a new configuration.
The jolting crashes and derailments were filmed with French National Railways locomotives and equipment that were delegated to the ‘scrapyard’. Director Frankenheimer said that it was like someone had given him a very large full-scale set of Lionel trains to play with. One derailment scene wiped out almost a half-million dollars worth of Panavision camera equipment, but the film was saved. It’s in the movie. You almost duck, watching it.
Two excellent films about the art of sabotauging trains. Makes the OSS film a real ‘head-scratcher.’
Not always. The Andrews Raiders (General) took out a rail from a curve. But it was the inside rail, and the Conferderates gunned it, as best one can in a steamer, and clung to the outdside with sheer momentum all the way through the curve. The loud series of crashes confimed that all the inside drivers made it back to the rail on the other side too.