I once had some On3 locomotives guilty of doing the following:
Summit County Journal; Jun 19, 1915
C. & S. Engine Has Severe Accident
A pin on one of the drive wheels of the engine pulling the passenger train over from Leadville worked out when the train was a couple miles below town Tuesday morning and let the drive rod down, causing quite a smashup. The engine did not leave the track however and no one was injured.
A freight train was at Dickey and the engine from that was pressed into service and pushed the passenger train with the wrecked engine into the Breckenridge yards, then pulled it on out an hour or so late.
Had the accident happened on a down grade at the top of a high cliff, instead of on a stiff up-grade where the engine was quickly stopped, it might have been quite a serious wreck.
Great find when you have an accident already accomplished by one of your model lokies.
ReplyDeleteI didn't realize that was a common occurrence on 1:1 railroads also! Makes me feel better (-:
DeleteThis story raises some interesting questions. Having a lot of experience with quartering model locomotives I know that a difference of just one degree between the drives is enough to seriously hamper the running mechanisn even to the point of NOT running. The question is how did a single locomotive move the entire train including the broken engine up to Breck? Did they first unpin the other driver on the bad axle? Did they actually move the engine and cars separately? How did they overcome the potential binding and move an otherwise skidding engine up the tracks?
ReplyDeleteWellllll, imo, this is a case where a modeler (me for instance) applies scale logic to a non-existant issue. You see, physics does NOT scale down. Side rods on these engines were linked separately from the drive pins so that even if the pin came out the siderods would not fall apart. The tolerances on these engines were so tight that even witout the one pin in place the other pin - along with the axle bearings would have held the driver in quarter while it "coasted" - being pushed. On most models this would not be possible (even if you could disengage the worm of the power train without picking it up and taking the gearbox cover off and forcing the gear mesh apart). There is so much slop - even on the best built models - that trying to roll it with a missing pin would wind up with a jammed mech!
Otherwise it might be a fun "re-enactment" of the prototype situation...