Layout Wrecks

[stilson4283]

Well once again we had a good wreck on the R&IT. :D Engineer Cyrus and conductor Super Dave were working Buffalo yard to help get ready for the show this weekend. By the time they were done they had an axle count 288. This was fine pulling out, it was shoving everything back in that ended up being the problem. While shoving onto track 1 in buffalo there was a "mishap" between CP Rohatch and the Alexander Bridge. They manage to de-rail 7 CSX coal cars, a NYC transfer caboose and a Conrail caboose #21288. The last coal car was on its side on the Alexander bridge, dumping its load onto the track below. Dispatcher Chris sent a crane to the wreck and a plow to the track underneath the Alexander Bridge to clear the coal off of the track. All was cleared up in a short amount of time. It was determine that the Train crew were pushing too many cars and have been served a warning to be more careful.

Dispatcher Chris

[Otto Vondrak]

If the last line of your Form D reads, ".... and the Dispacther is CLS," then you can expect a wreck at some point! haha!

here's a map of our layout: http://ritmrc.org/media/ritmrc_trackplan_2002.jpg
CP Rohatsch is the crossover to the right of High Falls.

Road Foreman Vondrak
R&ITRR

[zwsplac]

I was running a 40 car intermodal train on the local clubs modular layout, and had a rather spectacular wreck when one of my trailers leaned and snagged on a signal. Since most of the train was on a corner, it buckled to the inside, strewing trailers and containers everywhere. The worse part was, my train was on the outside of 3 tracks, and the 2 inside tracks had trains present also, so they got wrecked too! The crowd at the mall where we were showing loved it.

[zablocki22]

Title this "Where did the CBQ coal hopper go?"

We have a section of the railroad where three tracks snake and combine to two tracks on a mountainous area. A train was coming down grade and jumped the track which isn't that big of a story. The story is where did the equipment go. Four cars derailed and a couple rolled down a small hillside into the entrance area of a cement plant. At the time it was not known that there was a CBQ coal hopper in the consist. The train was put back together and we got back to operating. End of evening. Next week comes and goes. A couple of weeks later one of the members asks if anyone has seen his CBQ hopper. We start searching around the different yards, industries, tunnels and (even the floor). Nothing. I'm poking around and Happen to look in the area of the wreck from a few weeks ago and BURIED in the trees as if it were ABANDONED for years is the hopper. I wish I had a camerea to take a picture of it, the car owner, as well as a lot of members of the club when seeing this thing.

Vincent

[Trainman2084]

I've got the best one yet the guys up the club and I were running trains getting ready for open house and I had just finished my double stack train well I was running it around see that I just checked all the tunnel clearences they all looked good anyways I was running made it through the first 3 tunnels. After exitting the 3rd tunnel I came to the 4th tunnel went in all right it came out look all right anyways I hit the train station platform and it stood straight up along with a container with out derailing a single car. the night went on and I had come up to the interlocking were I had to cut a couple of cars out of the manifest or mixed frieght I had also made up for the show I cut the cars I needed started down the siding going over the bridge and WAMM down the engines went all 3 of them plus 2 cars luckily they were only the ones that I had just bought and have no detail parts on them I rerailed everything checked it all out couldn't find any defects I reran the engines back and forth couldn't find anything wrong. So I finished the work I had to do ran back across no problems and so you all know this is the same siding that runs to our coal mine I recoupled and did an air test I was on the move again. Well about an hour later one of the senior members were running a 50 car coal train he came off the mountain slowing down so that he could back down the one side of the wye so that it would put him in line with the siding he made it to the bridge and in the middle of the bridge he drop 23 of the 50 cars right into the creek below the bridge.

[ngotwalt]

At the Purdue Railroad Club's last openhouse we had a local guy come down, he does so from time to time and we let him run his stuff because he doesn't have a layout. Now are layout has a car limit of 22 cars, a limit that our guest simply ignores. Running a 35 or so car roadrailer, we had him waiting in our 6H track, which is a flyover over the mains. Suddenly someone threw something (our layout has some funky wiring going back a number of years, I love the modular, its DCC and so much easier) and the engines on the roadrailer highball, whole train streamlines around the curve, every roadrailer falls about 4 inches. Not that I don't like this guy or anything but he is arrogent because he spends all his time making sure everything he has runs perfect, but its all Athearn blue box, lacking in detail for us, give me a red caboose car anyday. He also beleaves that a coupler pin is responsible for every derailment, told me a pin was too low on an intermountain car, I looked at it and saw a short stub of a trip pin I had already cut and exclaimed there was no pin, he pointed to my airhose, he was going to cut it off...had to explain to him the difference....I digress.
Cheers,
Nick

[Otto Vondrak]

Years ago on the R&IT, our advisor brought in his 30-year-old scratchbuilt streamliner- a very nice free-lance rendition of the CNW's "400" pulled by two vintage Varney F3's. Well the train rain fine during its course, up until a point when the two F3's literally jumped the tracks and leapt to their death 6" below to the next level of track!

Cause of the derailment was never found... the A and B units continued to operate, but the drawbar between the two units had broke.

-otto-

[Smilin' Ed]

Back in the 1970s I was a member of a club with a layout in the basement of a local TV repair shop. We had several penninsulas on the layout with 30" radius curves on the loops. I managed to pull all the cars off the track on one of those curves. Covered hoppers went crashing to the floor. Henceforth that location on the layout was known as "Ed Man's Curve"

[Mike Walsh]

Well, it does help to have club support of a railroad attraction.

This attraction, named "Augusta Station" is located in Augusta, MO, about 45 minutes from the Arch in St. Louis.

http://mvns.railfan.net/cnwreck.htm

This place DOES have it's own webpage, but it appears to be down.

This club is N scale, and I'm a bi-scale modeler, modeling N and HO scale. *grin*

Mike

[DSteckler]

It's up now.

[SRS125]

I rember about 3 years ago I had an N Scale model Power RSD-15 catch fire on the layout. An investagation lead me to beleve that the friction of the moter rubing the shell caused the fire to start makeing the loco a moveing ball of fire. I saved the layout thank god I had a pepsi in the room

[conrail71]

Hey,

When I was about 16 I bought my first Athearn unit, a Conrail SD-40-2, it was the pride of my fleet. I decided to try my hand at one of the old MR articles that showed how to build an animated traffic circle. I started with a 110v clock motor to rotate the mechanism to "drive" the vehicles around the circle. Well half way through my installation the phone rang, so I dropped the motor on the layout to answer it. The funny thing was that the motor leads were just about the same distance apart as HO track. It landed on the end of a yard track and welded itself to the brass track. Remember the SD-40, well it was parked on the other side of the layout, no insulated joints between the 110v and itself. All at once the headlight exploded, the motor sizzled and melted down the body shell. In about 3 seconds the shell caught fire and I had to dump my Sea Monkeys on it in order to save the house !!! After it cooled I checked out the unit, all 12 wheels had huge flat spots where they were on the rail. The only salvageable equipment werethe Kadee couplers, but now I'm older and smarter....er maybee not.

[ngotwalt]

Two years ago some friends and I from Purdue decided to go up to the international hobby expo in chicago, and stay at the one friends house then go to great midwest train show the next day. At the International hobby expo Digitrax had set up what they called the digital derby. There were four throttles and a base station set up to a figure 8 of track, which had four Athearn blue box F-units on it, the idea was to make the biggest wreck you could, now normally it would cause great pain to wreck a train...but I'll tell you that was fun!
Cheers,
Nick

[CRail]

I was videotaping a guilford GP9 lownose pulling a short 7 or 8 car train around a simple loop. I had my 6 year old sister operating while i was shooting. My younger siblings (now 9m 7f 4m [rather large age gap between me and them]) have all been trained for what to do in the event of derailment or dragging equipment. after going around a turn, an old caboose (which i dont use because i dont use cabooses) derailed and because of the turn flew off the edge of the board. In a panic, my sister cuts power to the transformer. The caboose holds on to the box in front of it and... Domino effect, the whole thing rolls off the board. The cars were all ok, (some after a few repairs: wheels, trucks, weights etc.), but as for the GP9, it has never run smoothly since.

[stuart_iowa]

i just got a brand CP sd40-2 athearn , the pac man loco and she wanted to try it out, I had the loco out running around the layout as a break in period, she took control and dumped it onto the ground ......she did no damage in the first dumping, I put it back on the tracks and she was running it again, dumped it on to the floor in the exact same spot.....this time the damage was visiblie. she broke off the front left steps, and dented the side , endless to say hand rails no longer fit this loco on one side. that the first and last time she ever tried to operate the layput. I guess I should of seen the divorce coming after wrecking my locomotive

lol