Well, it’s that time of year again, where everyone celebrates black magic and dead things for some reason. So let’s all try and give our best scary train stories.[}:)][tup] I’ll do the first one.[:D]
It was a bright and clear day on a weekend, and a long-time N-scale model railroader was at his LHS looking for something new for his layout. He stopped by the scenery section and noticed a "NEW!" figure of a grave-digger with an especially well detailed 1/160th stopwatch. He had just put a small graveyard behind a church building on his layout, so why not have someone digging a grave? He bought the figure, and after giving the layout a quick dusting and vacuuming, put it in the graveyard. Since it was such a nice day, he went outside to do some yardwork like his wife told him to (he’d been putting it off, and she was really serious this time). After some hours, he came back in to see if the glue for the new figure had dried yet. It had, but he noticed a brown patch by one of the gravestones that was green grass before. He also noticed a figure from another part of the layout was missing. Since he had just vacuumed, he assumed the missing figure and patch of grass weren’t glued down well enough. After a good night’s rest, the railroader went to his layout again to fix the parts that the vacuum must have damaged. Oddly, he noticed another patch of grass missing in the graveyard. “What in the world? I thought only one grave was damaged by the vacuum,” he thought. The grave-digger was still glued tightly in place, so he went ahead and fixed the graveyard. When Monday came, he had to leave for a few days to go on a business trip. When he got back, every figure on his layout (except the grave-digger) was missing, and all but one grave in the graveyard was missing its grass. “Ok, this is just spooky,” he thought to himself. Suddenly, he saw the grave-digger look up at him, and press the button on his amazingly well detailed stopwatch. The railroad
I thought the scary story was going to be that after Darth installed all of those Rapido poles and power lines, someone in the family decided to get a cat.
Half Moon has a rather terrifying story about a ghost engine. It was in the mid 1990s when a new crew hit the road for their first through run at night. The day, was Friday he 30th, and took place in the local restaurant.
Johnny, the engineer, was listening to the tales told by the crews of odd things when Fred walked up. Fred was his Conductor, who got his certification a year earlier. Normally, HO&N didnb’t like running rookies like this, bu at the time, it was necessary.
“And there it was.” An old conductor said. I could see right through it. The menacing crew, the screams echoing from the whistle.
“Oh cme on” chimed in Fred. “You aren’t telling those old ghost stories are you?”
“You don’t believe them?”
“No.”
“But you know the curses 13 carried, right?”
“The boiler crushing th two workment during her erection? The pipefitter bieing impailed? Her dropping her fireman? Or what about her killing her shop crew and the scrap dealer? It’s all phooey Johnny, don’t let him scare you.”
“It’s not phooey. Remember when Half Moon rebuilt that bridge, took the Chapel caboose with them? 13 would not cross that bridge for 7 months
I agree - that is a well written story with a very nice railroad flavor from Flashwave [bow]
(Edit: reason that Ulrich and my post is displayed before Flash’s post is because it was a Halloween story. Or more precisely because Milwaukee hasn’t hit 3am on the first Sunday of November yet, while Europe is well past 3 am on the last Sunday of October.
I wanted to thank you guys in public too for the compliments. I also encourage yas to see if you can find a reference I make to a song.
Also, thanks Darth, I’ve wanted for a while to get myslef to flush out what happened in the Rock Valley Pass for some time. This was a fun way to do it.
That post reshuffle is rather annoying.
Since I will likely be moving out and on my own in the next year, I wanted a way to tie into the layout at Dad’s and the one I start. I would take Rock Valley, who is serviced by Ferry, which would represent the distance between me and Dad. Rock Valley would not stand to be cut off, nor economically sound for the railroad to have done so, the ferry was an alternative. It may be more costly in the long run, but fuel prices can be stretched out. the only real catch is the limits in railcar volumes. Rock valley holds at least two major cities and a healthy farming community, each requiring a possibly huge rail car supply.
Both tales are great - and I can imagine both done as stories in black and white video, in that style we older folks know from the 50’s. Both would make great Twilight Zone episodes. Mr. Serling himself would be proud…
Hmmm… .maybe a new series is in order… “Railroad Tales”…"Come with us tonight for a journey few men take today. Out where there’s few roads and fewer people, only the twin steel ribbons trace a route between high mountain and deep valley… where, under the gleam of headlights and in the thunder of massive machines, strange events may happen, and what is seen is often not possible… "