After watching an hour long special on train tragedies I got too wondering if anyone on this site has ever modeled train disasters.
And are there any pics out there of such work?
I’ve seen stuff like damaged box cars being hauled on flat bed cars but no real devastation along side the tracks, I’m thinking of doing a derailment scene so that I can put all my emergency vehicles too work?
What do you think, is it a bad idea or in bad taste too model such a thing?
I personally wouldn`t,although a freight derailment without fatalities and the clean-up of such would make a neat scene. Emergency response such as Haz-mat teams,fire and rescue would,police etc could still be incorporated in the scene.
Thankfully many times freight derailments end up without fatalities esp a simple derailment as opposed to a collision.
Now doing an Amtrak disaster like the Conrail/Amtrak thing in Bowie MD, with lots of deaths would not seem right to me.
So a simple derailment would be fine in my mind ( Hulcher,Haz Mat, fire Depts,etc Mangled freight cars,etc) .
While not done often, people have modeled wreck scenes. About 50 years ago, MR had a short feature on a gentleman whose entire modeling effort went into creating dioramas of disasters - overturned locos (with fully detailed frames,) splintered wooden cars, maimed cattle…
More common is the, ‘One battered box car in the canyon next to the trestle,’ scene.
A friend of mine inadvertently created a wreck scene a long time ago. He had two HO interurban cars, scratchbuilt of very thin wood, to which he had added full loads of passengers made of painted pink dental wax. As Murphy would have it, one overran a turnout just as the other was arriving in the opposite direction. The arriving car drove between the floor and roof of the other, split-spreading the sides and spilling maimed ‘passengers’ out onto the ground. He spent a couple of days placing emergency vehicles and first responders into the scene and took a couple of rolls of photos before clearing the line and taking the casualties to the workbench for repair. Where those photos went is a mystery - I lost track of the modeler a long time ago.
Modeling a wreck isn’t hard. It’s making the wreck look convincing that’s a challenge.
I have one engine—an E7–that I’ve weathered to represent a locomotive that suffered a traction motor fire. The rear trucks on this beaten up Mehano somehow got scorched and warped both truck sides enough that it kind of looked just a little too obvious, so I gave it the scorch/rust/banged up look and placed it behind the trainshed at the Exceda Wye yards. Then I noticed something else—the left front side of the E7 cabside had several small cratered pits–just the right size to make one think that the loco was used for target practice–more rust treatment was called for. I’m still trying to figure out what happened to that loco that it had pitted sides and scorched/warped truck frames------
Wrecks are fairly transitory things, they generally last a short time, hours, days, maybe a week or so. Only really huge disasters (which are very, very, very rare, once every decade or two) take a significant length of time to clean up.
I take exception with a lot of the attempts to model wrecks because the situation modeled is often such that a real railroad wouldn’t be operating trains through the area with the conditions modeled or would have significant restrictions on the area (curfews, form B’s, speed restrictions, stop boards, etc).
It might seem like a nifty thing now, but 3 or 4 years from now will it be so cool when they are still cleaning up the derailment?
Generally, the model wrecks I’ve seen usually involve a locomotive or some freight cars at the bottom of a cliff, or at the foot of a tall trestle, where retrieving them is either too expensive or dangerous.
I know of a couple of prototype situations where the cars have just been left there by the railroad. One is at the bottom of a tall viaduct at Cascade Summit in Oregon on the old SP (Now UP) Shasta line, and another is on the now abandoned SP branch line out of San Diego in Carrizozo Gorge.
But pretty much, wrecks are transitory things, so a derailment on a model railroad would be good for some photographs, but you’d want it cleaned up ASAP to start the trains running again.
I agree with the transitory nature of such modelling. It isn’t something I would want to have permanently displayed. That said, I did model one for an evening to get this photo for a photo contest. There are surely some defects in the realism of the image, but it did very well anyway! [:D] Today, there is no trace of the wreck, and I think that is the message from the other responders: they tend not to be evident in any way after several days, weeks…
Well, I’d say creating an actual crash like Gomez Addams did in his ghoulish house on television would be in bad taste.
One can create a permanent train-wreck site if you follow the Salt Creek example. A snow avalanche wiped out the Salt Creek steel bridge on the Southern Pacific in the Cascade Mountains long ago while a train was passing. There remain rusted wrecks of railroad cars below… Sort of reminds me of the bones of pack animals I saw below below a hazardous footpath over a pass from the south into Gardiner Basin in the Sierra Nevada Mountains (Kings Canyon National Park)…
i have a tastefully done wreck scene on my layout. I model in the wood car era. my wreck has a couple of scratchbuilt boxcars, wrecked beyond salvage, and a flat car which has obviously been broken in the middle. The boxcars have been converted into a cowbarn. I also strewed a few “damaged” parts. Of course i lettered the cars for my former and now bankrupt employers. but, as for those two little legs sticking out from under one of the boxcars…
On my old layout, there was one time when a pipe load one one of my trains came loose and began hitting scenery, tipping the gondola slightly each time. I decided to simulate the aftermath one the car initially began derailing.
Fortunately, nobody was seriously hurt in the Burger King parking lot.
I had a train derail on my layout during one of my normal runs simulating its movement over my railroad, so I worked it into my storyline. I also changed a couple of rules I go by for my line, since the area I was having it be at was an area next to a river,so we had to modify a couple of things to be safe next time. No, I didn’t work anyone getting hurt into the scenario, just surprised!
Now you’ve got my interest. I saw them on an episode of PBS’ “California Gold” a year back, when Hewell Houser was retracing the Carrizozzo line with some motorized handcar enthusiasts interested in re-opening the branch. Didn’t know they were from a movie.
You don’t happen to remember which movie it was, do you? I’d be interested. The lettering–at least what I could see of it–made me think that the wreck happened in the 'sixties or 'seventies.
This is the wreck next on the Great Smokey Mountains Railroad. This was a staged wreck for the motion picture “The Fugitive” and as of 2006 it was still there. I took these photo’s from the tourist train as we rolled by.
I’ve seen several layouts that have such scenes. How else would one model a big hook in action? I have to say that I did not particularly enjoy viewing those scenes. I mean they didn’t hold my interest and make me want to linger.
