What is the Worst Railroad Disaster You Have Had?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Late the other night I was moving the ping pong table and it folded up on me. My set up is new and modular so while dramatic I lucked out and had little damage.

My casualties were one curved section of rail, one cheap box car, and some cracks in riser / trestle equipment. Thanks to my decision to make the modules out of 3/4 wafer board and 2x4 legs the whole thing did not break and the structures protected my power unit and other railcars.

What is the worst railroad disaster you all have had? I imagine a good number of derailments end up on the floor and a Yarmony style sideswipe could involve hundreds of dollars worth of equipment. With a 2 year old I can see all kinds of potential problems there.

2

Steadied myself with a hand on a shelf on the outer wall of the layout. Shelf came off the screws. On the shelf were my PCM 2-8-8-2, a Trix 2-8-2, and a BLI J1 2-10-4. Each of them sustained damage, with the J1 the least…a bent drawbar. The PCM needed to be shipped back to BLI for repair, and I had to order a drawbar for the Trix and glue a marker light back into its spot on the smokebox.

Crandell

3

It seems to be Murphy’s Law that sooner or later, no matter how careful, or how it comes about, every modeler will have at least one loco take a Nosedive to the floor.

That seems to be relatively a given.

Stepping on said loco on the floor and causing further damage whilest trying to retrieve it, Priceless.

[8-|]

4

Hi

My worst disaster was sending brand new loco bought that day in to loco depot.

It preceded down the siding behind the loco shed straight onto the floor OOPS! loco written off very colourfull language ensued,. and its now spare parts for its replacement that was purchased three months later.

That was the newly laid siding without the buffer stop on the end and finished 1/2 inch from the edge of the know world.

Thats the fastest you will ever have seen a new buffer stop purchased and fitted not to mention superglued and wired down.

So that the only way through that stop is now by driving trains like a nut case.

regards John

5

My New River Mine kit and a Backshop got squashed while moving house. The damaged Backshop ended up at our club to be bashed but the Mine is still in disrepair in my back room. I will need to re build the legs for the car loader section and I was think I mite scratch build most of the conveyer sections that need replacing. Almost 100 bucks worth of kits [:'(] No biggy.

6

To date: An A-B-A lash up of Proto 1000 C-Liners pulling a passenger train encountered a still unknown issue that caused the lead locomotive to derail while going across the top level of the duck under entrance into the old layout room. The track here was similar to an urban elevated line that ran above the lower street and lower tracks and about 56" above the ground. End result was lead C-LIner hit the ground front coupler first breaking the KD #5 and sending the trucks, drive shafts, worm gears, clips and washers all over the room. The shell stayed intact and but received some scrapes. Fortunately I was able to find the most of the ejected parts and later put this engine back together. Some touch up painting and she is still in active service.

Whenever this consist is on the layout my oldest will always start off with a " Hey Dad, remember the time when…"

7

I have never put a loco on the floor - yet - but a few of my $35 cars have found their way to the concrete. I wouldn’t call this one a disaster, but years ago I was assembling a hydrocal building - don’t remember what one - I put a tad too much pressure on it and it literally exploded in my hands. After a few appropriate expletives, I sat there and laughed.

8

Let’s see. One particularly bad night of operations led to 3 derailments which not only took out a total of 7 locomotives but about 40 cars and a bridge…as well as several buildings…[B)][xx(]

9

A brand new Kato Conrail 83 Mac picked a switch while I was showing some friends my layout, did a perfect nose dive killing the engineer, conductor, and the brakeman. Terrible sight to see I did reuse some of the parts to build another loco. It did inspire me to put up the masonite around the layout until further scenery is complete, LOL, Jim.

10

Tried to remove a backdrop single handedly and it wound up on top of my downtown passenger station.

Fortunately, I was able to repair the damage.

11

Hi!

Knocking on wood, I can say that over the last 55 plus years, I’ve never had a major catastrophe on any of my layouts - of my doing. Of course I’ve had the usual derailments and collisions and such, but nothing critical that couldn’t be brought back to as good as new.

I did have one situation that was not of my doing… About 12 years ago I decided I wanted to get a Tyco “ATSF” 0-4-0, that I would weather and put in a park display on the layout. This was the first HO steamer I ever had, so there was a little nostalgia involved.

I found one on Ebay, paid $32, and never heard from the seller. At that time, Ebay wouldn’t help on anything that small, so I was stiffed. So awhile later I found a second one, and it arrived and I set it aside on the layout near the edge.

As I was very involved with my employers merger and settling into a new position, I had no time for much else, including model railroading. But about a year later I decided to work on that loco, and discovered that somehow it had been damaged - with the tender broken in two, and damage to the loco headlight and details. It was ruined. To this day I don’t know what happened, but only can guess that someone knocked it to the floor and put it back on the layout and kept quiet about it.

Sooo, a year or two later I bought a third loco of this type, figuring I could get one good one out of the two. It was not easy, but eventually I did end up with one that I could use as a layout display.

But, a funny thing happened… I really didn’t want it on the layout anymore, and sold it on Ebay.

In hindsight, I should have just left well enough alone…

12

When I was a young teenage boy, I decided to switch from O guage to HO for the greater realism, to become a “model railroader” rather than a kid with toy trains.

I sold my collection of Lionels. As much as I’ve enjoyed HO trains over the years, the small price I got for those old beauties was a disaster. I wish I still had them, too.

13

Mister Beasley,

Believe me, I share your pain! But may I add to the story…

At the end of my love affair with the Lionel (1958-59), a work friend of my Father’s offered to give me his substantial collection of postwar Lionel. I refused to take them, for they were “toys” and I was just not interested. My ol man was never physical with me, but he should have slapped me alongside the head and said “take them, smile graciously, and thank him profusely”… This was debacle #1.

Soon after (1960), I traded all my own Lionel for HO stuff - Athearn and Atlas. While I loved the new HO stuff, I did get taken for a ride by the storekeeper… This was debacle # 2.

In the '90s, I decided to relive my Lionel childhood and began acquiring postwar locos, cars and accessories. This continued thru about 2003, all thru the heyday of high collector prices. About 2008 I decided that it was time to sell off the Lionel, but market prices were down to about 1/4 to 1/3 of what I paid for them. Soooo, I still have them - sort of giving me debacle # 3…

14

Geez…[:|] For a minute there I thought you where going to say you managed to reuse the parts to build another engineer. [(-D]

15

Well, I would classifty this as the ‘great sunburn disaster.’ I was cleaning out the garage one bright and sunny day (my RR is in the garage) and moved some largish cardboard boxes outside so I could sweep the floor. Well at the top of one box was a nice P2K C&O GP7 - DCC and sound equipped in its box. It was outside for a few hours while I finished up. On opening the GP7 box later, the loco shell was more like orgami then a diesel - it was a real trick getting it off. Thankfully, Walthers had a few decorated shell replacements in stock and the innards were not damaged - so it turned out not to be a too costly lesson learned.

Charles

16

Neighbours cat, 'nuff said.

17

I’ve had few disasters.

However, one time at the Timonium Train Show, John Glaab had a shelf collapse inside a glass display case, which dumped dozens of HO brass models onto the level beneath them, presumably with at least some damage.

Some colorful language was indeed heard.

If I recall correctly, my back was turned at the time, so I only saw the tail end of the collapse happen, as I heard it.

John

18

I’ve got one thing to say about this thread: collectors insurance.[:-^]

19

Back in my youth, when I was ignorant of layout design, I had one spot that had accesibility issues, excrabated by the fact it was 11 feet off the floor, to compound my ignorance it also had a passing siding, you guessed it, the only turnouts to give me grief were at this location, good thing no scenery was in place, so with the aid of a ladder is was able to access the trouble spot, I decided to operate a train through the location to aid me in my quest to solve the derailment mystery, of course this train did not derail when diaster reared its ugly head , my shirt sleeve managed to snag a passing car, dropping most of the consits and my Key Imports UP 2-8-8-0 Bull Moose that was purchased that very morning to the cement floor, the carnage was awful, it took some time to put the Bull back together and to this day it wears a dent in the cab roof as a reminder.

I was so infuriated that I tore out that section on the spot, rebuilt it at a lower elevation, deleating the siding while improving access, lesson learned, no long sleeve shirts permitted in the layout room!

Dave

20

No real disasters but I can say how I avoided a potential one. I hired three teen age boys from our church to move us to a new home. They had to move my 5 x 8 HO layout with full foam scenery out of the house, onto the truck and into my new train shed at our new home. With a smile on face but real authority also, I told them they could break my wife’s china, ruin my computer and damage my furniture but if they hurt my layout they wouldn’t get paid. Needless to say they moved it with no damage.