If you can’t afford the toy, you shouldn’t be playing with it. What’s the big deal about cost? The cost of anything is part of the business. Sure, find cheaper and safer ways. But that’s the cost of a power switch. Is it cost effective in the given situation and location or not? If you have some idiot in your employ who costantly runs through switches, you get rid of him not the switch.
And yes, going through a misaligned switch may cause a derailment not only reversing in the middle of the move.
I’ve never heard of a train derailing while running through a trailing point switch. Yes, a train will derail if it tries to go through a facing point switch that has been run through…
It has happened…usually the switch but because of thin or broken flang on the wheel. And believe it or not, it is more prevelant at slow speeds when there is less inertia. Remember, the right side wheels have to jump over or climb over the outside rail. If the speed or force is not great enough to force the inside over to the rail then the outside doesn’t open to allow the flange through, it goes over instead.
In 45 years of my experience the only derailment that I have seen from running through a trailing switch, without reversing movement, was at a Armstrong interlocking…the switch locks on this plant were steel bars about 2x2 inches and were connected to several hundred feet of pipe line to the locking lever, the points were also connected to several hundred feet of pipe line to the actuating lever. Points never split when it was run through and the movement was derailed when the wheels climbed up on top of the rail. Today’s power operated switches don’t have such mass holding the points in alignment and are run through with a relatively small amount of force, hand throw switches require even less force to break the switch lug.
Well anything can happen and probably has at one point. But the vast majority (if not downrightright near all of them) of switch derailments are from reversing through a previously run through switch.