[boilermaker69]

Went along to the Ballarat & District Model Railway Club tonight to give a couple of my locos a run. I set up a nine car consist attatched to to locos. Unfortuately for me the train derailed in the fiddle yard with one loco hitting the ground from four feet. Loco is badly damaged, it tore the front bogie clean off and there is some peripheral structural damage to the loco body, pity really as i've only had it for about a month. I'm going to attempt to get it repaired but I think i'm going to be up for a complete new one.

 

[pedromorgan]

just so we can have a good laugh at you (and offer our sympathies....) what loco was it?
i once saw an entire fleishmann ICE hurtle off the end of a layout at high speed onto a concrete floor. it was a sight to behold!

Peter

 

[Doug]

Ouch, that's a shame. How did it get from the fiddle yard to the floor? Off the end or over the side?

 

[Dennis David]

I knew fiddle yards were a bad deal.

 

[spongebob]

OUCH!! Thats gotta hurt. Best get the Health and Safety people to investigate. Or put a barrier round the yard would be sensible, in hindsight of course.

 

[Dennis David]

I'll have to remember to add a small berm between the right of way and the edge of my bookcase.

 

[spongebob]

I have bisions of a large number of people hastily erecting barriers round their fiddle yards even as I type. Amazing how often they aare just open boards though on exhibition layouts.

 

[boilermaker69]

QUOTE (Doug @ 19 Jul 2006, 22:37) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Ouch, that's a shame. How did it get from the fiddle yard to the floor? Off the end or over the side?

It went over the side, maybe there's a case for barriers as later in the night another member had his $240 X class Victorian Railways diesel do the same thing but on a different part of the layout.

 

[neil_s_wood]

I have an inch and a half wall around my layout for just this reason. When I first set up my layout I had an A4 go over the edge as came down a slope too fast. It hit the deck from about four feet. It still has a damaged buffer from that accident. At that time I had nothing around the edge. Now I do and always will.

 

[boilermaker69]

QUOTE (neil_s_wood @ 20 Jul 2006, 08:38) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>I have an inch and a half wall around my layout for just this reason. When I first set up my layout I had an A4 go over the edge as came down a slope too fast. It hit the deck from about four feet. It still has a damaged buffer from that accident. At that time I had nothing around the edge. Now I do and always will.

When I build my layout, it to will have a wall around it, as for the club I will be making sure I put my consist together on an inside road. Expensive lesson learned.

 

[Ben Manicom]

My current exhibition venture is going to have around a 9 inch retaining wall on all but the front the front is a bay platform so no high speeds here any way its going to be run by a shuttle unit that platform in a straight line.
Speaking of nasty accidents I had an A4 fall off a curve at high and pile drive itself into the side of a passing GWR Collet goods with a slow goods. The whole train fell off the side, The A4s handrail were ripped from its body and its buffers along with the nameplates the Pullman coach behind the A4 had its metal coupling wrenched free of the bogies, The Collets rear coupling and its mounting sheared off the link between the tender was destroyed and the following 6 wagons behind the collet were badly damaged (two irreparibly) The Collet now carries a Hornby fat tension lock on its tender and a very bodged link between the tender and locomotive.

The award for the most realistic crash i have ever seen goes to a Dcc layout (its not as good as you think). A 4F was running around a scale 3 miles an hour on the down line and an operator changed the points to transfer it to the up line (which it wasnt suposed to do) it move on to the up line and head on into an up express travelling at a scale 100. Both Locomotives and all the rolling stock were made of brass and the force of the impact pretty much destroyed them. The 4Fs Boiler was torn off the chassis and the Express locomotive frame crumpled, I didnt stick around to see the aftermath to the coaches.

 

[dwb]

>Dcc layout (its not as good as you think)
Oh, I dunno... locos under driver control, signalman slips up, two trains collide head on .. seems like a dose of too much realism to me.

David

 

[Ben Manicom]

Its all fine Im just sure the guys the engines belonged to might disagree now

 

[Gwent rail]

I have a copy of Railway Disasters by O S Nock in my bookcase. The crash described by Ben could have been taken out of one of the chapters in the book.
So we've now invented a new facet of our hobby, "finescale disaster modelling". There will no doubt be much argument amongst the purists as to what parameters are appropriate for a disaster to be close enough to the prototype to be called "finescale"!
Have fun with that one!

 

[spongebob]

Never be able to match the Gomez Addams train crashes though.

 

[bangerblueed]

So who's up for recreating the nuclear flask train crash on the Old dalby test track then a mainline 46 into a brick wall at a scale 100 mph

 

[boilermaker69]

Happy ending - the distributor is going to repair the loco at a reasonable price.

I'll have to wait a while though, better than writing it though.

 

[Dennis David]

Maybe you should keep the bubble wrap on when you run it next.

 

[Scooter]

I had this happen to a Lima Class 101 DMU.

Off the front of the Fiddle Yard, down through the attic hatch, smack off the upstairs handrail, straight over to the ground floor below. Completely wrecked. Got a shouting match from her indoors - "You'll have to be careful - that could've hit someone" !

Extended the board at the front of the Fiddle Yard by about 3 inches, and put a hardboard facing up as Neil said.

 

[spongebob]

Yeah scooter take better aim next time.