Good story...

I can't top that.  The only derailments my feeble old mind can recall are from my childhood and were strictly scientific in nature.  Where centrifugal force overcomes gravity at high speed causing irreparable damage to Tyco loco's.

It was later in life that I learned about SCALE SPEED.  Luckily the Tyco's made good crash test dummies. [wink]

The funny thing about your story is that if you were trying to get that pin out it would not fall out for you.  Murphy's law I guess.

Operator-induced derailment...

So I just got trains running around last Thanksgiving (too late for my open house, where the visitors saw my benchwork and spline roadbed where the trains WOULD run, someday...).  I was excited as can be, because my sidings and return loops could hold a 48 car train (47 Kadee cars and a brand new Athearn RTR Cotton Belt bw caboose) pulled by 3 diesels.  My neighbor (not a model railroader) stopped by for something else, and I dragged him down to the basement to show off.  My wife had asked me to drill a hole in the handle of a plastic comb, so I thought it would be simple to do that while the train was running.  He was impressed, until I dropped the comb, reached down to pick it up, and hit my head on the bottom of the benchwork as the end of the train was passing over.  The track is 56 1/2 inches (!) above the concrete floor at that point, and I hadn't yet put in any sort of safety net.  Two of the Kadee cars and the new caboose landed on the floor, with fairly dramatic results.  It seems Kadee cars EXPLODE when they fall that far to concrete.  One of the axles even broke in two!  The caboose shows only a couple dings on the corners of the roof, though.  I've bought a new pair of trucks for the car that needs them (could have just bought the wheelsets), and the repairs will take just a bit of CA on the cut lever pivots (on both cars) to be completely good as new again.

Lesson learned?  Improve situational awareness, don't multi-task if one of the tasks is critical, and don't take unnecessary risks with valuable cars!  I know accidents will happen, but stupidity (or inattention) makes them happen faster and more expensively!

Weirdest Derailment

My weirdest derailment is yet to be explained.  I had been running a train around my layout getting ready for the Piedmont model railroad tour to make sure it was dependable.  The open house lasts for 4 hours and the trains run continously during that time (hopefully).  Anyway, the train succcessfully made at least 50 trips around the layout without a hitch.  I stopped the train and didn't return to the layout until two days later.  When I tried to run the very same train around the layout the second engine in the consist would derail in the exact same spot every time.  The weird part was that it was in a straight section of track!  I checked the track, the loco, everything....but could find nothing wrong.  I took the engine out of the consist and ran it around  by itself and it derailed in the same place.  When I turned the engine around and ran it short hood forward it didn't derail!  Both engines in the consist were Proto 2000 U30's.  I tried a number of other engines in the consist and none derailed.  I ended up runnin a U30 as the lead and a RS36 in consist for the open house and no problems.

Now it gets weirder....  After the open house just for fun I put the offending loco back in the consist as it originally had been and it went around the layout without a hitch!  Was it just "shy" and didn't want to be seen by the 67 people that visited my layout?  I'll probably never know.

Rick

The Wrecked Southern Pacific freight of 1989

The Year is 1989 My SP and Santa Fe Rail Roads are in the glory days and it's a warm (90 Degrees) Summer Day in Northridge California I'm in the garage running a 50 car train with my two Rivarossa Cab Forwards speeding along the Desert portion of the Railroad on about 2/3's of the way across my 20 ft straight section.

Lets go back about 15 min : As the south bound Freight leaves the station in Fresno California headed for Los Angeles with 30 Freight Cars and needing to run through the Desert and a stop in Mojave to pick up 20 more cars destined for San Diego. I went over and pressed the automatic Door opener to let in some fresh air and some light into the garage. The temp was running close to 100 degrees and the cooler  90 degree air felt good as the 2-1/2 car main Door opened and a flood of fresh air filled the room. I finished the pick up of the 20 cars from the Borax Mill in Mojava, the 18 Foot wide Door had just stopped and the engines were cuffing like crazy I could see the second SP Cab Forward exit the station area with it's 50 car load heading out of Mojave and it was picking up speed now. Everything was running great no sound unit in the engines like today but with 32 Drivers cranking it still sounded good. My Friend Terry was talking to me and had just finished switching the Borax cars onto the Freight and was saying how smooth it operation had gon as he was very new to the game and was just sitting in his chair and I sat back into my chair and was just reaching for the throttle when out of the corner of my eye a Bright Red object flashed across the room coming in through the Large open Doorway. WHAMMO a Bright Red Frisbee flying saucer SLAMMED into both Engines. Both engines 22 Cars and Frisbee all hit the floor in a loud CRASH. Two 17 year old teens that actually had thrown two Frisbee's at the train at the same time of which one went over the top of the garage were Laughing hysterically in the allie behind my house where the door open out to as their father had just walked out the back gate to witness the disaster. One of my other friends had been setting on the chair on the opposite side of the room took off out the door and reached me just before I took one of the kids heads off with a baseball bat. You could say I was a little Pissed off. After a court appearance and law suit and luck for me the Judge was a Model railroader I received $2500.00 Damages the Max for small claims court but the two boys spent the rest of the summer on a trash puck up crew from 7:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. every day including the weekends and their father who was a good neighbor asked me if I had an extra Bat after the Judges verdict. following is a photo of the two Cab Forwards as I still haven't repaired them. Some day I may fix them when I find the time.

Did someone mention Derail?

I took the photo today and it's the first time I've looked at the engines since the court day.

Dan

Can't beat Dan....

...nor would I want to.

Oddest "derailment" didn't actually involve a derailment as I remember, it was simply two couplers popping apart, leaving a caboose behind at the grade crossing that had caught it's coupler trip pin.  Happened on the BC&SJ...and might have been caught on video.

 Also, while turnouts are probably the #1 source of derailments, #2 for me is definitely helper ops, where a section of cars between the lead locos and the helpers get stringlined on a curve.

On video - I think...

The op session Jeff is reffering to was taped for "Ops Session Live #3" (available from model-trains-video.com). My memory is not clear on if the incident itself was caught on video. But some wisecracks about the Reefer Express missing its caboose were.

The cause of the problem was a caboose with a dropping coupler. The dangler caught on the east grade crossing at Oakhill and instantly uncoupled the caboose. I don't believe however, that anything actually derailed (go figure).

Much merriment was made about the reefer express charging down grade from Oakhill sans caboose. The engineer didn't notice anything was a "miss" until it was pointed out to him...

Charlie

Gondola derailment

Had some scrap iron get under a gondola while loading and wasn't noticed, this caused the car to tip spilling its load at a crossing.  Not a good day for the local crew.

Fascia Canyon Dive. . .

I was running a freight around my layout to help breakin a new SD45T-2 (before the new Athearn tooling) and everything was running fine for about 10 minutes.  Then I turned around to take care of something and then I didn't hear the train running anymore.  I turned around and my new SD45T-2 derailed and had taken a dive into "Fascia Canyon" and broke a truck at the bottom of the "canyon floor" (the cement garage floor).  The engine took a couple of cars with it as well.

Derailments

I used to have derailments in the old days due to indadequate car weighting. Those problems have disappeared since I joined Brooklyn N-Trak because a fellow club member took my empty gondolas and coal cars and weighted them so they can be anywhere in the consist and not come off the tracks because they car or cars behind are heavier.

Urv

Ramming speed, captain!

Ok, here's one more... definitely a lesson in letting trains run unattended...

On my first BC&SJ, the 4x8 version, I used to set a train in orbit and around and around it went. This layout was a twice around with about 5" of vertical between the lowest point on the doubled-loop and the highest.

One night while the train was going round and round I needed to duck into the house (from the garage). I was gone perhaps 2 minutes. As I went back into the garage from the house I was just in time to observe that

• there had been an uncoupling between two cars
• leaving the caboose and a few cars sitting on the track in front of the South Jackson depot
• and the engine (and other cars) relieved of the drag from having an entire train behind it was rapidly approaching the marker lights on the caboose (Horace Fithers sez there were crewmen bailing out of there in one all-fired hurry!)
• there was no way I could get back to the throttle (pre-dcc) in time to do anything...

BOOM! The engine plowed into the cars sitting in front of the depot sending 'em all over the place and thankfully derailing the loco or it might well have pushed all the cars over the edge of the world into The Abyss.

I believe the culprit was one of those darned Atheran coupler pockets with the little spring metal clips holding the coupler in place. I'm guessing the clip popped off dropping the coupler on the track (at least the front car in what was left of the cut sitting in front of the depot no longer had a front coupler...)

Sigh...

Charlie

Can't be as bad as this.....

 I don't know how this will fit into the "De-railment" focus on this thred, but it's still worth mentining.

 About a year ago, I purchaced an old Athern Blue-Box SD 40-2. The decision to buy it was not mine, it was gravity's. Well, I was trying to decide between 2 kits, the SD 40-2 and a GP 38-2, and I had finally decided on getting the GP 38-2. When I was going to place the SD 40-2 back on the shelf, the bottom of the box, locomotive and all, fell out of the top of the box, still in the hand of a bewildered teenager (me) and the locomotive hit 3 metal shelves on the way down, each with a loud "Thud". Well, this being a hobby shop, those "Thud"s may as well have been 500lb bombs falling from the sky, because before I knew it, the sound had reached the employees behind the counter. One of them, who rung me up a few minutes laghter, came to inspect the damage, and assured me that I didn't do nothing wrong (the Athern kit boxes were never sealed at this shop) and that I didn't have to buy the locomotive. Well, I still did, and he told me that if I had any problems, to bring it back, and he would try to fix it.

I got home, and (somewhat pestimistcally) tryed out the locomotive on my layout. Amazingly, it survived the fall, and ran just about as good as it's mere expnsive, RTR counterpart (which I bought a few months before this day)

Over time, the locomotive took another fall, due to me not checking my Tech II's settings before plugging it in ( it was set at 100% in the on position) and it shot off the edge of my layout, like a rocket, and hit the ground again.

So, the first de-railment happened without rails, and the seccond had too little rail, and too big of power voltage. The first one of gravity's doing, the seccond one of a failure to check for "Rogue" voltage (accuallly, forgetting to turn off the power pack)  Oddly enough, dispite the abuse, that locomotive is the  best locomotive in my fleet, and runs like a real SD 40-2

  A couple years ago at the

A couple years ago at the clubs layout running a 48 hopper car and cabin behind 4 RS3 and RS1 locos on the mountain division. The long grade about 1.5 percent to the top of the mountain. The grade is about 25 feet long and perfectly straight. The front coupler of the first hopper (darned Athearn clips) decided it was going to give up at the top just before the crest. By the time the cabin hit the tunnel and curve at the bottom it was going slightly less then the speed of sound. One of my hoppers is still missing in the layout somewhere. The cabin (Bowser N5c) and three GLa hoppers totaled. Of all the hoppers on the train there was only one Athearn and that had to be up front? Now all my Athearns have screwed on covers. The 4 locos came down the mountain with no problems at least.

Since then there are no trains over 10 cars on the grade without helpers pushing.

There have been other derailments and accidents. Rear end collisions are common when club members get to gabbing and lose where their trains are. Another is when a train fouls the main and the Acela comes barreling through at bullet train speeds.

Pete

helix

Years ago, with my German layout, I run a passenger train with 12 ADE cars up the helix. It derailed and two cars hit the floor nearly 4 feet deeper. The cars fell apart with only a few parts broken.

And why????

I had forgotten to remove the pictures from the track!

Wolfgang

Of course it was at a show! I

Of course it was at a show! I happily arrived at a yard that was all #6's, no room on the right side so I had to crossover to the other main (double track) and thence into the left side yard. No problem as my 12 car Empire Builder with 2 E-7's on the point just flowed in, I felt pretty good, but wait it's a dead end yard! Now the fun began as I slowly backed out through the ladder and the crossover! All of a sudden I had those 85'  cars all over the ground, tying up the yard throats completely, and arousing the ire of the yardmaster. Since then I built my yards with #8's and enter the main on #10 turnouts, so I can back anything anywhere! John

Dear MRH fans, Whatever the

Dear MRH fans,

Whatever the cause, derailments and other disasters are guaranteed to happen as soon as someone pulls out a still or video camera!

2 for consideration

1st entry 

16-car HOn30 log train comprised of
- N scale SW1200 powered scratchbuilt Class A Climax
- N scale SW1200 powered MDC Class A Climax
- "Powered watertank" car (another Sw1200 bash)
- 16 x disconnected log bogies with loads, totally over 1/2 an actual kilo of trailing load
- and a bogie caboose

Now, given that log loads made from tree twigs are never consistent in weight, it is critical that the "heavy loads" are marshalled directly behind the loco(s). Given this consideration, one can run back and forwards at speed round 9" radii curves without a problem.

This train had been running all morning at a show without issue, when I went to lunch. As I came back to the layout, I was just in time to see the 2 locos, 1 powered watertank, and 1/2 the train "stringline" off a curved trestle bridge, as they entered "onscene" from staging.

When the mess was cleaned up, it was discovered that one of the operators had decided to run the train "the other way round the layout", and achieve this end-to-end direction change by simply swapping the locos/tanker and caboose to the other end of the train,
(thus effectively marshalling the loads exactly the _opposite_ order as specified)....

First corner, and it was inevitable really...

2nd entry

Same logging layout, different operator, different show, down on the dual HO/HOn3 route. A Mantua 2-6-6-2 tender mallet with 24 car MDC skel logcars has been doing the good work all morning. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, it flips straight over on it's side, right in the middle of the main onstage sawmill yard area.

The immediate source was traced to a siderod that had come adrift from the rear engine mech, and speared into the ballast, jacing the loco sideways off the track.

However, the crankpin was MIA...

a replacement pin was sourced (eventually), and the loco returned to service a few weeks later
(well after the show had finished, and we were all back home).

2 years later, during a odd mid-tunnel derailment, the crankpin was found lodged in a piece of styrofoam scenery former, deep in the LH side "exit to staging" tunnel... 

 Happy Modelling,
Aim to Improve,
Prof Klyzlr

PS: bonus "derailment",
Same layout, on the way home from a 3 day show, survived a 70knot wind-assisted trailer rollover at 70kph.

Forces involved twisted a 1 1/2 ton trailer hitch, trailer drawbar, and the towing 4WD's towframe 15+ degrees from flat. All had to be replaced before the trailer could be towed home safely.

Despite
- being thrown on it's side, and then righted again maybe not-so-gently
- being held in place by nothing more than Ocky straps, and riding on pieces of foam rubber
- and having lighting pelments, leg systems, 2 coolers full on unretrained heavy tools, and other misc show stuff crashed around it

the 4 (of 6) modules riding in the double-deck trailer survived with no structural, track, bridge, scenery, or other significant damage. (The layout rostered 22 scratchbuilt wood bridges, trestles, and "pig sty pier" systems).

The roof of the sawmill boiler house was dislodged, but found in the trailer tray that night.

A 4x2 kenworth semi tractor had "disappeared", leaving it's front and rear axles, and it's trailer anchored to the layout in place. (The frame and cab were "gone").

A visit to the crash site the next morning revealed a pile of gravel which had been "bulldozed up" by the leading edge fo the trail as it slid to a stop on it's side during the roll. The layout owner was casually nudging thru this gravel pile with his shoe when he spotted a kenworth-red flash of color. The cab and frame were retrieved from the pile, taken home, and glued straight back on the layout as a "rollover memorial" (12"/1' scale weathering and all...)

The Big Turbo Train wreck of 09

A friend of mine was bugging me for months to bring over one of my Rapido Turbo Trains to his place to run on his layout.  I was invited over to his place for an operating session and finally brought one over.  I put the thing together and I slowly cruised around his layout while slowly increasing its speed.  I didn't find any issues so we opened her up to see what she would do.  At full speed the thing just cruised around.  A few other guys showed up and I parked the Turbo in a siding because it wasn't going to be a part of the operating session.  After a few hours we were finished and one of the guys asked if he could take the Turbo out for a cruise.  I told him to go ahead.  He backed it out of the siding, put it on the mainline and opened her up.  Well the thing made it about 20 feet before it derailed going through a yard taking out about 15 cars.  We couldn't figure out what happened so I started to pack it up.  Once I uncoupled the lead loco I saw what the problem was.  The thing picked up a few track spikes.  The speaker hole is under the loco's and I guess while sitting in the siding the magnet for the speaker in the lead loco sucked up a few spikes which caused the big wreck. 

Another episode in why you

Another episode in why you should always run a powerful magnet around your tracks after doing any track work (after vacuuming of course).

Charlie