Hobbyist Ken Patterson’s recent layout room fire gives warning to the hazards of an unattended train, flammability of foam and heat potential of a high current DCC system short. Fortunately, Ken had a charged fire extinguisher handy or his house might have been lost.
I’m sure it’s past time to have my two ten year old plus home fire extinguishers professionally checked or replaced.
Safety 1st
I had an air fryer basket that was cooling on top of a not recently used stove grate spontaneously combust while I was eating in the other room.
I wasn’t sure it would work since it was more than 30 years old but that old, dusty, Kidde ABC did exactly what it was supposed to do. I don’t know if it would work again since it had been partially discharged but there’s a great big extinguisher outside my apartment door if it doesn’t. Hopefully I’ll never need to find out 
I know that I’ve had two close calls–once, a turnout caught fire, and, another time, a Marx 591 also had a flash of flame. Both cases where caused by undried contact cleaner. Fortunately, my railroad room has a concrete floor upon which the items where unceremoniously deposited, and the flames then went out, too.
There is something quite magical about green flame…
One of the best things you can do with those fire extinguishers you have at home is, at least twice a year grab them and turn them upside down and back again slowly, several times. Over an extended period of time the media in them settle to the bottom and can actually stick there during a time of need making your extinguisher useless. A little agitation once in a while prevents this and/or reverses this to a point if the settling is caught early enough. Not many free things we can do to extend the life of our possessions, but this is one of them.
I suspect that it’s too late to do that for the one I have stashed (somewhere unknown) in the train room. Last time it was inspected was about 1998.
If we have a partially discharged or emptied extinguisher we can take it to the local firehall for a free refill. Date on it may be an issue.
I have three fire extinguishers and three smoke detectors in my layout room.
If the layout burns, the whole house burns!
Acquiantance of mine was installing resistor wheel sets on an Atlas HO tank car. Don’t know exactly what he did, but he induced a low level short that didn’t trip the breaker.
He wondered what he smelled smoking, then turned around and saw that the car had melted down to the wheels.
A fireman friend told me to tap the bottom of my extinguishers with a hammer.
I once melted a t-post part-way on a switcher…
Essentially, the t-post held a coupler, e-clip, and spring to the truck. The coupler was grounded to the body, and the e-clip somehow was contacting the pickup roller. Unbeknownst to me, my circuit breaker had somehow become bypassed and so there was quite a short circuit. The t-post itself was salvageable with a little sanding, but it sure didn’t look pretty.
In case of fire:
Do not panic.
Locate fire extinguisher that you purchased so long ago that don’t remember.
Locate hammer that you think you left in farthest corner of remote structure.
Panic.
This is coming from someone that dealt with several fires in his OTR career. I had a brake failure 30/30 came apart caught the wheel on fire on some oil that I had kicked up from a freshly repaved roadway. As soon as i saw flames it was these 3 steps. Pull the F over dolly the landing gear pull the pin rapidly disconnecting the air and electrical lines and pulling about 50 feet forward of a nicely burning reefer trailer 30 miles from the nearest fire department. My little 5 pound extinguisher wasn’t going to do jack squat on it. It was called I’d saved my crap and I’d let the carrier and insurance company fight it out over the trailer.
Of course, best thing is to prevent the fire. In Ken’s latest YouTube posting about the fire, he seemed to blame the DCC system manufacturer and the maker of the foam he uses for scenery for the fire.
However, what caused the fire was he was working on the layout with a train slowly running around his around-the-walls mainline, and left it unattended for like 20 minutes while he went upstairs to get a coffee. The engine ran through a misaligned switch and the short apparently heated things up enough to cause the scenery to start on fire.
I think a warning along the lines of “never leave your train running unattended” has been on pretty much every model and toy train set instructions for 100+ years. It’s still valid.
An interesting commentary from another modeler:
this thread and the Jan 2026 MRHPublishers Musings don’t emphasize enough the dangers of using higher amp (5A) DCC systems.
5+A systems should have power districts with some mechanism: bulbs, circuit breakers to limit the short circuit current to the track.
while bulbs may not be idea, they are inexpensive, eliminating the excuse for not having anything and dissipate the heat safely.
i use a 12W 1A T3 bulb on my PowerCab to avoid a delaying power cycles and provide an indication of a short.
However, unlike a circuit breaker that allows current up to its limit, or for limited times higher, a bulb gradually reduces voltage as current gets near it’s rating, preventing the use of some locos drawing higher currents.
1156 bulbs operate at ~2.25A will limit the operating current to something less than that
Interesting.
deleted. See greg’s post that follows.
a 5A system supplying ~14V to the track is ~70W and only ~0.6A from your AC outlet at 120V
Ahh, I stand corrected. But that prompts a question in my mind. My corrected statement being the case, that seems a lot less harmful in terms of a threat of fire.
how hot can a 60W light bulb get?
and it’s also question of density, for example, that much power across the space between the points and stock rail
Some years ago, I was working on my track. With the power off, I was using a Ribbon Rail Metal Track Alignment gauge which I had placed between the rails. I needed to leave the layout and when I returned later, I had forgotten about the metal track gauge which was still on the track, touching both rails. I powered up the layout and an immediate short occurred. It took some time before I realized what was causing the short. I removed the metal track gauge and repowered the layout. Nothing. The sustained short burned out the power supply device but, thankfully, no fire. When I read about layout fires like on this thread, I feel fortunate, but I am a bit surprised that the incident did not cause a fire.
