What's your railroading disaster story?

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Bernie's story reminded me of another one I have.

Back in High School I spent some time modeling Florida in HO with a modular group. I had just sceniced my module, got ground cover down, a bunch of trees, ballast, the whole works. But I didn't have a coffin for it.

We were packing it up on thursday night getting ready for its first show, and I sit it up on its end while I went to go get something from the other side of the cellar. I asked a family member (not naming names) to watch it while I went. They were doing something else at the time, and as I grabbed the thing I was going for, I turned around JUST in time to see the module fall over. Green side down...

Luckily, all was not lost. The trees just pushed themselves through the rest of the styrofoam, and some minor things were crushed. The worst damage was that a bunch of stuff (like ballast) that I THOUGHT was glued down, worked its way loose.

But damn, was I scared.

[Nato]

   The old Utah N Rail Modelers N Trak club now Wasatch N Scale 'WNS" (sounds like an east coast FM station) had a huge layout for many years. The club built a huge club owned yard consisting of two eight foot modules with sky boards and openings through to four setup tracks in the rear. Toggle switches allowed the power for the setup tracks to be turned on or off, when on trains could run on these tracks while trains were operating in the yard. We got invited to I believe the 2nd or third Hostlers Model Railroad Festival now going on 20 years organized by the Hostlers HO model railroad club in Ogden ,Utah  held in the Utah State Railroad Museum, the Ogden Union Station building which still hosted Amtrack service at the time. We were set up in the Grand Lobby (main waiting room) a large space accomidating many dealers and layouts. The floor in there is tile. We had a long time club member Ralph Huddlestone a Canadian,who still models anything Canadian he can. Ralph built a very nice Canadian Passenger train in the later Action Red scheme,most of the cars were kitbashes of Rowa fluted side cars and Con Cor Budd dome cars. Ralphs's train all 12 cars of it with locomotives was parked on one of the setup tracks. Someone was in front of the yard running a train making up a train. I happened to here the sound of a loco running behind the sky board, then the klunk of a car hitting the floor, then this repeated itself several more times before I realized what was happening and shouted for the yard power to be shut off. Someone had left the setup track power on and each time the yard switcher pushed a car onto a track Ralph's locos pushed his passenger train and a car fell off onto the floor.About six cars had hit the floor. Needless to say the club spent some money on Atlas track bumpers and installed them as soon as we could to the ends of the setup tracks. Several of the passenger cars were damaged,but repairable.          Nate Goodman (Nato).

[Wlal13again]

Ouch Rich. I know someone who did that same thing, but JUST to the cabs...

The cab survived wery well Ed, in fact it`s painted and lettered for Penn Central, The car body, well, it`s somewhat like the shell from a hard boiled egg when peeled...