What’s the worst model railroad disaster/wreck you’ve ever had. And pictures if you have any.
I crashed my first BLI the first time around. It bounced before it broke. Good thing super glue works. I bounced a new spectrum passanger car last night. Smashed a coupler, which gives me motivaton to put Kaydees on which is why it crashed. There ought to be worst stories than these. But its a start.
I remember one when I was showing off the layout to friends and family on Thanksgiving.
I had my Santa Fe El Capitan running on main one and a generic Santa Fe freight running on main two. While I was showing off some buildings someone said a car derailed. I tried to get to the transformer in time but I was too late!
A Santa Fe flatcar with a 50’s piggyback trailer derailed and snagged a telegraph pole. The pole snapped and the piggyback turned completely sideways and was now fouling main one while the rest of the train continued on. Then the El Cap came speeding by and the ABBA set of F units went right through the flatcar without any problems and pushed the derailed flatcar to the side. But it still ended up hitting one of the Hi-Levels. This coach then went sideways and took the two cars behind it with it and they ended up on their sides. The rest of the train kept going. This is when I reached the transformer and stopped the trains, obviously too late to prevent the disaster.
The aftermath looked bad, but apart from the snapped telegraph pole nothing was damaged. The Hi-Levels have interiors with people in them and some that were glued to their seats fell off. So there were injuries and maybe worse from this wreck.
I never found out why the piggyback derailed, but I still run it and have never had a similar wreck. Maybe a fluke, maybe something else. We and the NTSB may never know.
How about pulling 24 Roadrailers up a 40’ 2% grade (a good 12" rise), and they come loose just as the loco crests the grade. Needless to say, the train rolls (very freely) back downhill and before anyone can stop it it comes to the sharp curve at the bottom at about 200+ scale MPH. Off the track and through the warehouse it goes and a pileup ensues. I think we had 3 HO scale warehousemen badly injured and 2 others with minor injuries. The warehouse is on the edge of the layout, but thankfully it was glued in place, otherwise 24 Roadrailers would have hit the floor (yours truly would have seconds later).
A fellow modeler, while building a section on the layout in question, was using a scratchbuilt stock car to “test” the layout, and he dropped it on the floor and stepped on it (by accident), so, it became part of the layout as a wrecked car that couldn’t be recovered.
Brad
3.5% grade, 20 55 ton hoppers, live loads.
You can see where this one is going.
The power was 3 BB SD-40-2’s with two B-man GP-35’s pushing on the back. (This worked pretty well, considering it was DC) The live loads was we’re so heavy that all 5 of those engines still worked their tails off to lift the train up the short, but steep grade. At the crest of the hill the GP-35’s drifted off the train (The couplers we’re set in delay so they werent coupled, just shoving) and the top of the hill was the point where the two blocks seperated, so the Geeps could just drift down the hill.
Thats not what happened.
The lead helpers coupled snagged on the cabooses coupler. Helpers going reverse, lead units going forward. Uh-oh. Hoppers discharged there loads violently as they broke away from the rails and tumbled down the side of a hill, woodland scenics coal going everywhere, hoppers crashing down onto a company town.
The shop-vac came out and clean up took a good 2 hours. Coal drag operations over the line commensed soon again, but helper service was deemed unsafe, and coal trains we’re given 4 head-end units to tackle the grade, Trains we’re lighter since I learned my lesson with the live-loads.
You know, for all its trackplanning flaws and bare plywood, I still miss that old layout.
i can’t remeber why but for some reason i had to take the shell off my Atlas U33C- i decided to lube the gears, ect. while i was at it… after i lubed it i put it on the track w/o the shell and was running it to see if it was lubricated enough… well like a dumb*** i turned the power-pack to full speed and she flew off the track (which is just inches from the edge of the layout) and CRASH[B)] she hit the floor [censored][censored][censored][censored][censored][censored][censored][banghead][banghead][banghead][banghead][banghead][banghead][banghead][banghead] both trucks fell out , the drivshafts flew off, i found the worm gear 10’ away, i knew she was ruined. But after finding the parts i got the exploded diagram and got her back together it ran noisy…but it RAN. Then after that scenario(still the same day) i was running her pulling a train and she derailed, hit the floor [banghead][banghead][banghead][banghead][banghead] somehow the train came uncoupled and stayed on the track… the front part of the lower shell cracked in the second derailment and the trucks fell out but i got it running the same day. Didn’t run it for a week after that.
My dog ate an engine–happily, the engine was a diesel. I did stop it after it ruined the shell.
The dog is a beagle–it will eat anything.
I had read somewhere in a book on SP cab-forwards about the rear set of drivers coming loose under the boiler of one of them and separating the locomotive–one of those embarrassing ‘only on an Articulated’ stories you hear about.
Well, it happened a couple of years ago. I have a beautiful Sunset AC-6 cab-forward that I run pretty frequently, and it was chugging up the hill with a 20-car PFE reefer train. The screw that holds the two driver sets together dropped out, the rear set of drivers just stopped while the front set and the rest of the locomotive kept on chugging, the jolt disengaged the tender from the 20 PFE cars. Luckily I was using my hand-held throttle, so I cut power to the locomotive but wasn’t able to reach the reefers in time, and they careened back down my 2.4% grade, rocketing through my 36" curves and came to a rolling stop in my yard. Amazingly enough, one of the 36" curves was on a portion of the layout that is scenicked floor to ceiling (a la John Allen). It was like watching a runaway on Cape Horn. No damage to anything, but it was embarrasing, since I was showing off the layout to my cousin at the time and bragging about how powerful my AC-6 was. It took me FOREVER to find that @%$#& screw, though!
Tom [:I][:I]
Coal train grinding upgrade and into the tunnel. Working steam and tonnage.
Series of crash sounds as each hopper reaches the problem area in the tunnel. Mental images of coal loads, smashed couplers and wheels everywhere in the tunnel.
Turned out one coupler was a tad low and picked the track mid train. That evening all couplers on that offending train was replaced with Kaydees.
I had a BLI M1a on it’s maiden run flip onto it’s side and then fall 8 inches to the plywood below with it’s tender. Must have knocked something true because that engine never derailed again.
My Grandfathers layout had a knack of allowing a certain engine past a certain point safely for all the time you were watching it. The moment you looked away a loud thump, crash and “Awww Nooooo” rang out.
The engine in question (pictured below) hit the deck many times a weekend over its first layout life of 30 years. Its racked up another 20 odd since then, and still runs as smooth as when it came out the box - (They don’t make em as tough as that anymore!)
[image]http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d91/Challenger3802/008_5a.jpg[/image]
Ian
I had my worst about 10 years ago on a 8 by 16 layout. Had the main line running about 2 inches from the edge, and a second track right next to that one. The engine on the second track had derailed right infront of the other one as it came down the grade. We all know how the old horn hook couplers would never let go. The 2 loco’s and 20 cars all came to the floor really fast. It was not a pretty site! Now all my sides have a 1 inch side board around it, just incase, things happen I guess!
My worst accident was right after I’d installed a Tortoise switch machine. Most of my switches are thrown by hand, but some are powered now. Anyway, I put the Tortoise in…and simply forgot it was there.
As a result, when my eastbound Amtrak #1 (the Pete Stipanovich…named for a good friend of mine who died from cancer) went through the misaligned switch I had a huge mess on my hands. The entire train (2x F40PH engines, plus 6-7 cars) took a trip down one fo the “vertical cliffs.” I managed to catch one of the F40s and stop most of the cars from going over…but the lead F40 hit the floor along with the tail car.
Damage wasn’t as bad as I thought. Aside from a damaged F40 nose, some bent handrails, a bent motor shaft (not to mention the motor getting knocked out of place), it was easily fixed. The tail car was worse though. I not only managed to snap off (!) the coupler, but I broke off the truck sideframe as well. Oh, and since the car hit tail first, that was pretty messed up as well–the impact knocked out all the glass and damaged the rear diaphragm. (I put one on the curved end so I can run it mid-train). At least the glass and parts went back in, and I got away with touching up the paint.
A MDC Round house box cab that dropped 763 scale feet to a cement floor and turned it to a kit during track testing…Cox 47
I had a train that crashed off a viaduct about 30 scale feet… and then somehow bounced onto the floor 3 1/2 real feet. The shell broke off and some of the wires hooking up the motor came off and it took a week to put it back together and have it working again.
Another one I had was when my 2-year-old cousin came over one day. You figure it out. [xx(]