Drop a locomotive lately?


logandsawman

logandsawman

Well-Known Member
Last night I managed to drop my almost brand new Bowser loco on the tile floor. Didn't do TOO much damage but I ended up spending an hour or so glueing the steps back on, an air tank, and messed around with some other stuff. Probably have to buy a new sideframe or whatever it is called that goes over a set of trucks. A couple plastic pieces broke off and I glued them on, it works but I figured that fix is temporary.

I put it on the track this am and it runs so just clumsy me didn't cost too much.

They have so dang much packaging around the box and stuff, I will be throwing some of that away. I was fiddling with getting it out of the box when my fingers forgot what they were supposed to do.
 
I have never dropped one, but I have slightly damaged some trying to get them out of the packaging.
 
No, but the janitorial staff knocked my Kansas City Southern E8 off my desk. Some pretty major scratches, few broken foot rails, and many parts come off. Of course they didn't look for the tiny tiny broken parts and probably vacuumed them up.

Then at Christmas time someone thought they would help put the trains away and dropped or somehow broke the fish-belly under frame off one of my wooded (real wooden) box cars. Going to have to completely rebuild it.
 
I dumped one on the floor a while back. A "Chessie Heritage" unit I had custom painted. It had to be scrapped.

I also lost an entire unit train train of N scale engines and coal hoppers when a fellow club member ran a red signal, and hit my train head-on with his brass passenger train. EVERYTHING ended up on the concrete floor, in a gazillion pieces. A brass NYC Mowhawk, 8 brass passenger cars, 4 Kato GE engines, and 140 hoppers...
 
Funny you should ask...this hit the floor just the other day. Atlas gold.
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I have a habit of running a train while doing layout work. I snagged the coupler with my sleeve as I was clearing the area.

This one hit the floor a few years back while remodelling the room next to the wall with the display case. Still haven't done anything with it!
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Terry, yikes I can't imagine how you felt with that one!!!
 
Rico said:
Funny you should ask...this hit the floor just the other day. Atlas gold.
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I have a habit of running a train while doing layout work. I snagged the coupler with my sleeve as I was clearing the area.

This one hit the floor a few years back while remodelling the room next to the wall with the display case. Still haven't done anything with it!
View attachment 56493

Terry, yikes I can't imagine how you felt with that one!!!
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Rick, it was pretty "colourful" around there at the time. The other club members thought they would have to repaint the walls after the verbal blasting. It wasn't a whole lot better with the one here at home...

If I had known you had those two units on the deadline, we could have probably worked something out in our trade few months ago...
 
Sorry you had that happen. I think just about every model railroader has dropped something or had a train fall to the floor. It's a sickening experience.

I always think of the science concept of "potential energy". Put in plain English, if you drop a train from the box to the workbench, it won't get smashed up as much as if it goes all the way to the floor, picking up speed as it falls. So I try and do as much as possible over a desk or workbench or on the layout in a yard area. Sure, you can still break off steps and the like, but it helps reduce damage.

I also like the idea of using those rubber floor pads on the desktop for a bit of cushioning. They're cheap and if you ruin one, you just grab another at Lowes.
 
Bob said:
Sorry you had that happen. I think just about every model railroader has dropped something or had a train fall to the floor. It's a sickening experience.

I always think of the science concept of "potential energy". Put in plain English, if you drop a train from the box to the workbench, it won't get smashed up as much as if it goes all the way to the floor, picking up speed as it falls. So I try and do as much as possible over a desk or workbench or on the layout in a yard area. Sure, you can still break off steps and the like, but it helps reduce damage.
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Think "terminal velocity". And not the Grand Central kind of terminal...
 
bnsf971 said:
Think "terminal velocity". And not the Grand Central kind of terminal...
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Well, "terminal velocity" is the speed at which an object will no longer accelerate due to friction from the air. Hopefully you're not dropping them quite that far. (Don't build your layout on a 10th floor balcony!)
 
And of course that reference to GCT and crashes made me think of this.

Quite possibly one of the biggest electric train crashes that ever happened. The train couldn't stop as it approached Washington Union Station, ran into the building and crashed through the floor.

Suddenly they had a GG1 Electric Train in the basement, but not the famous one by Lionel. This was a full size, real locomotive. You can read the story here:

http://ghostsofdc.org/2012/06/21/runaway-train-union-station-1953/
 
Bob said:
I also like the idea of using those rubber floor pads on the desktop for a bit of cushioning. They're cheap and if you ruin one, you just grab another at Lowes.
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Carpeting can work wonders. A loco dropped from my suspended layout 7' to the carpeting, and there was NO damage!!! It must have hit just right.

I have a 3' x 3' piece of carpeting that I slide around in my layout room, to keep my feet off the cold tile floor. Just so happened that last night I wasn't planning on doing anything more than putting the loco on the track and OOPS.
 
Yeah, it can't be velocity that does the damage, but catastrophic deceleration. The kind that goes from 15'/sec to zero in about 0.00013 seconds. Thin plastics and details don't like that.

I dropped three locos off a shelf five years ago. I knew it was going to happen as I reached to steady myself on the shelf, but had to reach out of instinct. I damaged two of the three only enough that I could rather easily fix them...in fact it took just minutes. The PCM Y6b, a beast of an HO steamer, didn't do as well. BLI agreed to fix it for $44. That required a replacement of the front engine and pilot.
 
Bob said:
Well, "terminal velocity" is the speed at which an object will no longer accelerate due to friction from the air. Hopefully you're not dropping them quite that far. (Don't build your layout on a 10th floor balcony!)
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Trust me when I say 10' is more than enough... Our club's layout used to have a section nearly that high. We had a few spectacular runaways on the downgrade from there.
 
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I've been lucky up to this point. Having been on this and other forums for ~12 years, I've read many threads by modelers who had something catastrophic happen to a valuable loco. Usual causes were: (1) lack of a protective barrier where track runs close to the layout edge; (2) stepping out of the train room and leaving trains running unattended; (3) leaving a swinging gate open without cutting power to the track (or otherwise blocking train movement); (4) standing on the open floor and struggling with some part of the loco that won't detach or fit properly - then in a moment of clumsiness the model slips out of their grasp and plummets to the floor.

As a result of reading those horror stories, I've built my layout to [hopefully?] prevent any of the scenarioes described above, and tried to avoid working on locos/rolling stock anyplace other than on a work surface or over my lap.

Having said that, I've probably jinxed myself and will do something absent-minded in a moment of distraction - with disastrous consequences!:rolleyes::eek:

Terry, your mishap was an unusual case. Is the member who crashed his train into yours still alive?
 
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I had an Athearn Tunnel motor loco shell on an Overland chasis and a lot of detail to it. The Athearn body didn't have any clips to hold it to the chasis so it was just sitting on it. During an operating session, one of the operators wanted to show the detail of the loco to another and picked up the loco just below the brake blister. The chasis held on just long enough for him to bring the loco off of the layout and over the concrete floor. The loco had DCC with wires running to the head and rear lamps. Those wires tore loose from the bulbs as the weighted chasis fell to the floor with just enough tumble to land nose first. The chasis bent along with the side frames of the forward truck. The operator sent me a new Overland chasis.
 
bnsf971 said:
I I also lost an entire unit train train of N scale engines and coal hoppers when a fellow club member ran a red signal, and hit my train head-on with his brass passenger train. EVERYTHING ended up on the concrete floor, in a gazillion pieces. A brass NYC Mowhawk, 8 brass passenger cars, 4 Kato GE engines, and 140 hoppers...
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How long was his suspension for, or did they completely revoke his eng license?
 
Iron Horseman said:
How long was his suspension for, or did they completely revoke his eng license?
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He ended up leaving the club over the incident. The rest of the story is, he suffered from Parkinsons, and saw he was in trouble, but couldn't move his fingers on his throttle, and didn't think to say anything. He just watched his train plow into mine.
 
bnsf971 said:
He ended up leaving the club over the incident. The rest of the story is, he suffered from Parkinsons, and saw he was in trouble, but couldn't move his fingers on his throttle, and didn't think to say anything. He just watched his train plow into mine.
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That sucks for both of you. Assuming the brass Mohawk and coaches were his, he paid a penalty too. That didn't help you much though I suppose.
 
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