What's your railroading disaster story?

[eric220]

I had an interesting experience yesterday.  I just bought a pair of Kato AC440CW's.  I wanted sound and working ditch lights between the pair, so I bought a Digitrax decoder with function outputs for one and an MRC decoder with sound for the other.  I dropped them in, and the Digitrax worked like a charm.  The MRC sounded beautiful... but wouldn't move.  I try to debug the thing, and the next thing I know, I have an explosion, audible for over a mile.  A fireball, no less than 50 feet in diameter appears above my brand new locomotive.  Flames shot 10 feet into the air, torching the decoder.  Fortunately, that’s all in scale, so the resulting fire was about two candle flames’ worth.  Because I was debugging, the shell was not on the locomotive at the time, so it's no worse for the wear.  The MRC decoder did manage to take the Digitrax decoder with it, however.  (They were both on the tracks in the same power district.)  I have to say, that's one of the more... interesting moments that I have had in this hobby.

The experience got me thinking about what other disasters have transpired out there.  Care to share?

[GaryHinshaw]

10 ft sounds about right:



but a 50ft fireball?  Anyway, Kudos to MRC for getting part of it right.

[ljudice]

It's stories like this that make me really anxious to jump on the DCC wagon...  

It's not relating to model railroading, but about 4 years ago I was in my basement, frantically shutting down my computers as a thunderstorm swooped in. There was a flash and instant crash of thunder - as my cable modem exploded in flames and my well pump regulator (or whatever it is)  flew about 30 feet across the basement, making a crack in a cinderblock.   The well pump died a day later - the entire affair costing about $2000 in repairs.

Country living!

[wm3798]

Before I built my layout I kept a lot of my equipment at the club layout.  One day I went down, and was greeted with the fateful phrase "Don't worry, it still runs fine!"  Turns out while running some trains, one of our junior members neglected to check for clear track as my nearly new WM SD-35's entered a long tunnel, which had very little "fall protection", causing a vertical excursion of about four feet.  The result was a broken pilot, a smashed cab, and some busted up walkways and handrails.

I put humpty dumpty back together, and ran it with a badly restored shell for about 3 years, until I finally found another WM SD 35 on ebay for a reasonable price.  So the story has a happy ending...



Lee

[sizemore]

Before I built my layout I kept a lot of my equipment at the club layout.  One day I went down, and was greeted with the fateful phrase "Don't worry, it still runs fine!"  Turns out while running some trains, one of our junior members neglected to check for clear track as my nearly new WM SD-35's entered a long tunnel, which had very little "fall protection", causing a vertical excursion of about four feet.  The result was a broken pilot, a smashed cab, and some busted up walkways and handrails.

I put humpty dumpty back together, and ran it with a badly restored shell for about 3 years, until I finally found another WM SD 35 on ebay for a reasonable price.  So the story has a happy ending...

Lee

Please tell me you thumped that junior engineer!?!?!?

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I had a decoder blow up on me while cleaning the wheels.

It was in an MP15, and I guess I was giving it too much resistance. All of a sudden "poof" and a little wasp of smoke drifted out of the exhaust stack.

I opened it up and there were char marks inside the shell, on the mechanism and the decoder itself looked like:

[ljudice]

"too much resistance"  - do DCC locos just blow up if they are pulling too heavy a train, on a hill, for example??

This sounds like fun!

[wm3798]

No, he was holding it down with a 5 gallon propane tank.  The only engines I've ever had blow a decoder were Bachmann plus and spectrum diesels.  Those things are so tight (friction wise) they were useless.  The only Bachmann I have on the layout at this point is the 2-8-0.

Lee

[Puddington]

Kato SD 40 meets a then three year old... three year old quietly takes hand held throttle and finds out that if he turns throttle dial all the way to the right the little train "goes fast"... Custom painted SD 40, with about 14 cars flys down track, to open switch... which leads to track that is intended to connect to second piece of layout which is (gulp) about 20 feet away and in no way attached.... SD 40 plows down "track of doom" at full throttle, smashes through pile of scale ties, glued at end and drags entire consist off the end of the track and down 48" to a concrete floor........... I need not go on.......

SD 40 was sent to emergency where it died after many attempts to save it's life.... several cars were retired to the old boxcar home as a result of the accident... the then three year old thought the entire incident was "cool daddy"........the switch in question was disabled....................sigh..... :-[

[wm3798]

I bet he learned a lot of colorful new words that day!

"My old man wove a tapestry of obscenity that hangs to this day over Lake [Ontario]..."

Lee

[eric220]

10 ft sounds about right:



but a 50ft fireball?  Anyway, Kudos to MRC for getting part of it right.

LOL, that is awesome!  That's pretty much exactly what it looked like, trail of black smoke and all.  (Sans shell, of course; thank goodness for small favors.)

[Puddington]

I bet he learned a lot of colorful new words that day!

"My old man wove a tapestry of obscenity that hangs to this day over Lake [Ontario]..."

Lee

Yes; he might have learned some colourful hockey-eque language that afternoon....... but all words were used in a sentence so the grammar and diction lesson wasn't lost on him.......... ;D

The SD 40 was a favorite..............sob.....



Rest in Pieces old friend...................

[AlkemScaleModels]

The experience got me thinking about what other disasters have transpired out there.  Care to share?

I shudder to remember this, but maybe it will be cathartic.

In 1997 I was loading my modules for a show. They were stacked in the garage. I had two 3x5 ft Alkem steel mill modules and two 1.5 by  7 feet Moose Lake modules. The 7 footers were bolted back to back in a coffin and resting on their short end. The steel mill modules were laying on the floor awaiting their turn. I hit the garage door opener not realizing that the door when open had less than 7 feet clearance.  The garage door knocked the 7 foot coffin over which rotated down and did a guillotine imitation on one of the steel mill modules. Needless to say the models that took the brunt of the fall where the totally scratch built coke works including an operational rotary dumper.

My wife heard the noise and came to investigate. She found me standing there in a state of dismay, shock, anger, frustration, (insert nasty adjective here). She offered condolences, but I replied, "You might not want to be around here for the next half hour or so." She beat a hasty retreat while I took a 5 pound sledge to my head.

That was the end of the Alkem steel mill module. It at one time won best of show at the Madison NMRA show. I salvaged what I could thinking if I stripped off all the buildings, and put up a Walmart it would have been a good analogy of the US steel industry. But I ended up selling the modules, track and undamaged buildings including the blast furnace  to a friend.  

There I feel better already. The good news is that I am working on a new steel mill that will eventually reuse some of the coke work pieces that only needed minor repair. Of course this will be bigger and better. The construction of some of it will be in my next book for Kalmbach on Steel Mill Modeling. I am due to send the manuscript to the publisher in a few days.

[Wlal13again]

Trying to strip a Kato SD45 and the shell fragged in my hands while scrubbing it with a toothbrush. Since they are about as easy to find as hen`s teeth I still have a Kato SD45 mechanism with nothing to wear..

[Ed Kapuscinski]

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