With Halloween up and coming, just around the corner, what could be scarier than an old-fashioned train wreck? And I don’t mean of the Gomez and Fester Addams variety, though surely they have their place-- just on somebody else’s layout, not mine! The real railroads go to great lengths, of course, and I’m certain most modelers do too, to avoid mishaps which are always costly, at the very least, in terms of equipment and often more so when factoring in the damage done to property, livestock and human lives. On the other hand, few can deny the sheer spectacle of the thing which practically compels any nearby onlooker to stand captivated, rooted to the spot, to witness the event to its dramatic conclusion. The power and immensity of such an occurance has even entered into our collective lexicon as an oft-cited metaphor whenever a speaker wishes to evoke a cataclysmic situation, as in “it was like watching a slow-motion train wreck”.
But I wonder how many folks model the train wreck, whether in some animated form, or else perhaps a wreck which has recently occurred, or else to lesser degrees the aftermath of a wreck-- a wrecked or broken engine perhaps, or set of freight cars in the shop battered and bruised. Now, in so saying, there are obviously two aspects-- the first being the potential cost in materials, locomotives and rolling stock which, just like in their real-life counterparts, can add up quickly! And the second being perhaps, who really wants to see a train wreck modeled in all its twisted glory anyway? But, I’d say that it would probably take some real skill and be a real challenge to pull off convincingly and not just look like some t
On my previous layout I had a set of trucks at the bottom of a rather rugged hillside on the banks of Mascoma Lake. There was a wreck at this location in 1960 and apparently there are still debris in the real lake. The locomotives derailed in a rock cut (probably the only thing stopping them from ending up in the water) and there’s a good chance that a set of trucks could have been left at the bottom of the hill. I’ve heard the wreck was quite difficult to clean up.
On my new layout maximum track speed is 10mph and there’s no extreme scenery, so there’s no possibilities for any catastrophic wrecks, although there was a minor one-truck-off-the-rails derailment last year in Northborough.
I’d assume some of the locomotive and railcar parts in the WRCO scrapyard may be wreck damaged. (The real facility doesn’t scrap rail equipment, but it’s my layout!)
Some of my feelings on the matter may be related to my having been involved in picking up the pieces after a couple of 1:1 scale aircraft misadventures.
I have never been tempted to model either the immediate aftermath or the long-forgotten leftovers of a crash. Abandoned junk in the weeds, si. Crash-damaged junk in the weeds? Not no, but **ll no!
On those occasions when there have been derailments with equipment damage on my layouts past and present, the casualties were evacuated (to the workbench) and repaired. All are currently in service.
When Gomez and his gang were doing their televised thing I was on the far side of a rather wide ocean, so I never saw the results of his handiwork.
As for deliberately modeling the immediate aftermath of a misadventure, I look on that the way I look on modeling a traffic stop. It wouldn’t take a month to completely obliterate any sign that it had ever happened, so I’d have to clear it almost as soon as I modeled it - and I have better uses for my time.
That said, there was a two-pager in MR half a century ago about a modeler who modeled wreck scenes as dioramas. From the accompanying photos, it was obvious that he expended more effort on modeling a smashed wood-sheathed box car than most modelers would have needed to model a whole string of like cars in undamaged condition.
When I was a high school student a friend of mine had a small interurban layout, including cars built of thin wood filled with passengers made of red dental wax over wire. One day he had an electrical [oops] that saw one car lift the roof of the other as it climbed onto the floor, leaving a truck in the other car’s `people catcher,’ Fragments of car side and bloody-looking casualties littered the right of way, pushed out of the more damaged car. So-o, he gathered up all of his emergency response vehicles, put them in place, inserted hastily-made policemen, firefighters and medics, then photogr
I have never modeled a wreck, but I think it could be fun. I have to agree that any ongoing railroad would clean it up and move on. So to have it remain, it would have to be on a competing line that went out of business as a result. That way the wreck could realistically remain on the layout.
I loved the scene in the Addams Family.
When I was young, my brothers and I would have wrecks at crossings.
When I was five years old, my dad built me this terrific truss bridge for my Lionel trains. He cut pieces of scrap sheet metal, bent them into angles, soldered the thing together. Almost three feet long. We had an over and under set up.
Before New years, we went to the show and saw a movie about the brave pilots in the war bombing the bridges. Hey, I could do that too. I had a bridge I could use, and bricks for bombs.
My dad whipped me good and rebuilt the bridge but it was never quite the same. I still have the bridge after sixty years, mounted on the wall in the room where I have my N scale layout.
Another bridge wrecking story. At the 1973 NMRA Lone Star Region convention, mast
With hidden staging yards, a helix sealed behind a sky-board, and a multitude of tunnels and otherwise hidden trackage, let’s just say that it’s judicious not to tempt fate.
Or you could model some of the consequences of a derailment, instead of the the actual derailment itself.
E.g. having a slow orders across a section of track that “has just been rebuilt”.
Or having some train or trains which normally would not pass through your area “detour” through your area due to tracks being out elsewhere.
Or having one or more sidings filled up with trains waiting for tracks further up the line to be repaired, giving you fewer places than normal to have trains meet on your layout.
Or fleeting or convoying trains through your layout - simulating a busy two track route where the one track is closed due to a derailment - sending through on the one track first a group of eastbounds, then a group of westbounds.
And so on and so forth. Lots of ways to simulate RR consequences of accidents without actually modeling the accident scene itself
I sometimes put a derailed car in the yard with a wrecking crew trying to get it back on the rails during an operating session but thats about as far as I go with modeling a wreck. I have a wrecked Algoma Central GP9 sitting on a flat car that I modelled to be the aftermath of a wreck. It was kind of a joke but it turned out great.
I like the idea of modeling a full blown wreck but Im not about to do it.
The Addams family, lol. Who didn’t want to do that, LOLOL. I still want to do that…and have done it.[:D]
I was at a operating session a little while back and we had a derailment. It was my first time there and a wrecking train was sent to the area and a full investigation was conducted. It was actually kind of fun trying to figure out what happened while searching through the wreckage.
I like the idea of a loco that’s been in a wreck sitting on a siding, I might do that. It would make an interesting piece.
We’ll take it either way! I’ve got an engine like that myself. Come to think of it, mine’s a BLI as well-- a 2-8-2 that took a nose dive off the end of the world…
I don’t want to model wrecks on my layout, but occasionally a small derailment does happen and is
worth a picture, and also a good reason to run the wreck train around the .
Having seen a prototype steam wrecker back in the 1970s pick up a modern SD45 diesel was really impressive. Steam still rules.
Do you (or have you) model any sort of train wreck on your layout?
No…Derailments are clear rather quickly and cars that can’t be salvage is cut up on scene and is usually gone in 3-5 days…One could have broken couplers and other small wreck debris laying around the former derailment site.
What are your thoughts about the idea? Too much, or maybe fun for a spooky occasion?
That is a modeler’s choice and in my case nope,don’t want a toy like derailment scene.
When you saw “that” scene in the Addams family, were you secretly thrilled, or were you clenching the edge of your seat and screaming silently “NOOOoooo!!!” as the two trains rushed toward their inevitable doom?
I didn’t think to much about since it was just one more of Hollywood’s ridiculous crash scenes-after all Hollywood loves crashes.
I’m not even going to ask if you’ve ever staged such an event yourself with your own trains… or maybe somebody else’s… (but of course, you’re welcome to volunteer the info-- we’ll keep it between us!
I will now exercise my rights under the 5th amendment…[:P]
Here’s a project I did several years ago…The flat car is a Walthers and the covered hopper is a Accurail.
I have done a grade crossing crash scene before because that type of wreck does not hurt any of my locomotives and have had animals on the track that has been hit.
My sense is that there are a couple of good reasons that we don’t model wrecks:
As soon as most locomotives or rolling stock are not upright, components that only exist on models become visible. A beautiful brass loco on its side exposes a worm gear and numerous screw heads, not to mention the “Made in Japan” label. It would take a lot of model work to create a credible locomotive undercarriage.
We tend to model the mundane. Most model railroaders soon learn that depicting unusual events makes our miniature worlds less credible. Real train wrecks (not derailments, but crashes) are very rare, so they don’t fit into a model of every day life.
As for me, I can’t bring myself to try to create a credible depiction of a wreck; I have plenty to do just keeping the mundane world in my basement running.
I’m planning to have some very minor wreck remnants on my model railway, a couple of trucks where a prototypical wreck happened, and a boxcar frame in a valley (inspired by a point some 100 miles west) but nothing major. Might think about modeling that one Thomas episode with the lit-up dragon, though…
Long before I came to work for MR, I was impressed by an idea in John Armstrong’s book “Track Planning for Realistic Operation” in which a shoofly track (with slow-order speed limit) was used to bypass a scene of bridge construction. Similar temporary tracks were built around wreck scenes to keep the main line moving while damaged tracks and roadbed were rebuilt. Even with all the wrecked cars removed, a scene like this along a narrow stretch of single-track main line would be a great scenic opportunity, as well as a way to stretch the time it takes for your mainline run.
