I had just finshed laying my track on the cork roadbed and was excited to see how my Amtrack would ride, my son just happened into the basement and distracted me for a moment.
Well, it seems that a yard worker at the local grain mill had not switched the turnout back to the main line and my train went crashing into the parked hoppers being filled with grain. One hopper and my A unit went crashing to the cement floor. The hopper was really messed up, I can only guess that the engine landed on it. Furtunately, this hopper was not one of my best and will now have to undergo some type of weathering and a few replacement parts to make it look good again.
The amazing thing is that the Engine (An Athearn BB) only lost a small ladder off the back. It still runs great!
Moral of the story, Check those switches after you have been working on the track.
Ouch! You’re lucky that the BB didn’t die! Too bad about the hopper though. I had a similar incident. I was driving along the line when i accidentally forgot to reset a turnout and my F40PH plowed through the bumping post and onto the floor!!! Luckily, the floor wasn’t very far away (I was building an on-floor mockup) It ran perfectly afterward, but i think it messed up a coupler on one of my Amfleet cars.
I ran a old round house box cab off the end of the line during layout building the long drop on to a cement floor pretty well turned the box cab back into a kit! I put it back into service but it ran out its last years with an odd limp and and a strange high pitched whine and the need to have the juice wide open. Cox 47
I am setting up my track so you cannot cra***o the floor–operative word setting. In the test stage I ran my son’s Hogwarts off the track and it lost a grab-rail. He paid me back in spades though. He crashed Lil Guy (pictured below) and I lost a grab rail and the front truck.
Why don’t you guys drive a small nail in the track near the end of the sidings so the trains can’t fly off the layout and land on the floor? At least until you put your bumping post / pile of gravel at the end of the siding!!!
In both cases, the trains derailed coming into the frog side of a layout and went over the side. Like I said, whit the finished layout, there won’t be anywhere a train can hit the floor.
A friend dropped his prized brass engine on the floor. [xx(]
The worst accident that I have heard of was a guy who freshly painted his brass loco and was curing it in the oven at 100 degrees. His wife started dinner and turned it up. The solder melted and the loco fell apart.
That’s what happened to me. I had a bumping post at the end of the siding, the crash caused the train to accordian and the rest is history.
I like the idea of putting some rubber foam or carpet down and had thought about it before, but I was thinking this is never going to happen to me. [:I][][banghead][D)][sigh]
I almost had a big mess once when catzilla decided to attack that Union Pacific mouse as it came out of it’s hole (tunnel). Good thing I had installed vinyl window screen to the underside of the layout to catch derailments in my tunnels.
About a week ago while checking clearences on an overpass, mostly for horizontal clearnence of passanger cars, an Amfleet’s overhang clipped the side and dragged one of my Bachman F40s toward the ground. Luckily I had some extra foam risers sitting there to somewhat soften the wall.
Thankfully it still works fine, no damange done. Adjusting the overpass took a while though
][banghead][D)][sigh]