Has anybody else heard the urban myth that placing a penny on the rail can cause a derailment?
My borther’s 7th grade science teacher told him this and believes it depite the fact that I have shown him several metal pancakes that used to be pennies and the copper and zinc are softer metals than steel.
It doesn’t matter if it does or does not cause a derail. It is a waste of good money, unsafe and illegal to be on railroad property.
Think that about covers it!
Mook
Truer words were never spoken. But you know how brothers are, we’re required by law to argue about everything.
Just though I would ad this in.
I posted it a while back but thought I would bring it back for the sake of the thread.
It bothers me that a SCIENCE teacher supposedly claims this, but hasn’t given any rational basis for how the derailment is supposed to happen. I think someone should ask the guy, with a tape recorder running, and post the transcript here. (Perhaps with copy/crosspost in one of the “humor” threads… ;-})
Nickels are stronger than pennies. When I was in the Railroad Club in high school, we had one member who was a football-team quarterback. We were out at Colonia on a fantrip to the ex-PRR main, and he decided to see what would happen if he used a nickel instead of a penny on the rail… thinking he would get a Metroliner at best. “Wisely”, he stayed upline and well back from the track after placing his coin, so in case it bounced or lifted at 100+mph it wouldn’t endanger him. What came along was a couple of E44s with a 127-car freight, and his nickel wound up with Jefferson stretched out to about 1 and a half inches, looking like he was screaming in pain. I still chuckle when I think how our quarterback scratched feebly at the railhead in disbelief at his loss both of a ‘souvenir’ and Five Perfectly Good Cents…
In my youth my friends & I used to put them on the trolley tracks when a trolley was coming & then recover it after the trolley passed & not 1 trolley was ever derailed.
I used to put pennies on the tracks all the time as a kid, never saw a train de-rail.
That hardest part was finiding the things after the train passed by, lots of times I never saw the pennies again.
Did plenty of penny flatening when I was a kid…as did many others that I know. No derailments yet. Maybe the teacher is just trying to keep the kids away from the tracks…as they can be a dangerous place.
underworld
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Oh yeah…miniwyo…cool pic! [:p][:p][:p][:p][:p]
underworld
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Though saying that might make some kids want to play around the rails.
I’ve seen a horrible train wreck from a penny. Those HO passengers didn’t see that coming.
What nobody has thought of is, what happens if that penny should be struck just right by a wheel and shooting out toward some stupid railfan.
I’ve heard stories from RR Police where a penny came flying out like a .22 caliber bullet and hit the idiot that placed it there knocking out his eye.
Of course they would probably sue the RR for everything they could get claiming that “Something” flew off the train and stuck this poor unfortunate person.
I squashed a lot of pennies as a kid.Even got one smashed be the #40 at Knotts.I also have a collection of pennies squashed by the #4449[:p].I think almost everyone got pennies smashed by the Freedom Train on its nationwide tour,and it never derailed.
I have heard this story too. Never believed it.
Often times that will happen with rocks that are on the tracks. I am 13 and still flatten pennies on the tracks. Mind you that the trains are passenger and go a maximum of 15 MPH. Never has a train even done anything remotly close to a derail and i think it is quite safe. However, i always stand a good distance away in case.
I put a couple of pennies on the track with duct tape then i left and came back later to check it out and i found both pennies flattened so much that i had to get the car keys to get them off the rail. When i finally got them off the rail it had 2 bumps on it. Whenever a train drove over it it sounded a little like a joint in the rail.
And am I the only one here that put a quarter or a penny on top of a nickel on the tracks.
When I was little I put a penny on a 24" gauge track and it STILL flatened it with no de-railment. This is exactly why I want to be a teacher…warping the minds of the youth!
(1) Calvin & Hobbs, one Sunday edition - find it if you can. Classic.
(2) MacGuy : The power screens in the undercutter usually found them years later.
[:D]
^^^Someone had a sheltered childhood.
I always used gum to secure the pennies. Never had a Conrail coal drag derail…not once…
No you are not[:D] I also have done that. They look very cool!!! And yes, i do play it safe around trains.
No. It is not a myth and the story is very true. In 1907, in a blinding snow storm, a freight train on the Chattanooga, Birmingham and Quba ran into a 13 pound penny which curling up in the flattening process caused the 10th through 14th cars to derail. Fortunately, these car had trucks fastened to the car bodies with cotter pins and remained up right. No hazardous materials were involved and there were no injuries.
A subsequent investigation by the NTSB determined that the penny had placed on the rail by a disgruntled former employee who had been fired on the spot when some tobacco juice splattered on the Division Superintendant’s hat. It was also found that the penny was a one-of-a-kind caused by a mistake at the US Mint. Somehow it slipped through the Mint’s quality check process and got into general circulation until a very smart coin collector found it and put it in his vault at his summer estate which was located not far from the derailment site. An investagation of a break in at the estate actually led to the arrest of the perp, when his finger prints were found on the safe.
From time to time, an eyewitness account has shown up on a number of web sites, but all postings strangely get deleted and replaced by the letters D of HS. Wierd!
The biggest thing to come from the incident seems to be the common Anglo mispronunciation of “Cuba”
But therein lies the point, this was no ordinary penny that caused the derailment, nor are pennies, or most coins for that matter, made of the same materials they were made of years ago, due to the cost and availability of such materials. But then again, it is a good method to keep kids from doing this and keeping them away from railroad tracks and getting hurt or in trouble. heck, its hard enough to keep adults away sometimes too [:D]