Railway Historical
and Modeling Society
Layout Photos
Mishaps, History and Other Stuff
Every once in a while, I find my self just letting trains run on the layout while working on something in another part of the basement. Not always a good idea. So this time I was running 2 trains on the same track in the same direction. I hear all kinds of sounds at the other end of the room and I know it isn't good. The NCE system has an emergency stop for the whole system which I do. One train had stopped for some unexplained reason, and the second train, you can see the loco here, rear ended it and started jamming cars up all over the place. None left the layout and none fell to the floor. Whew!!!!
This predicament was a result of wires hanging down from the layout underneath staging. I've replaced all my Christmas tree LED lighting so this is pretty much resolved. This time I just couldn't figure out why my train hadn't come around to its place in staging. I could hear the loco running but the train didn't seem to be coming around the corner. You can see my improved under layout wiring with my LED lighting project HERE.
This is another why did that train just stop? I'm not right next to the train as it is going around the layout, so when it stops I walk over to it and discover it has run over a bee and the body of the bee was large enough to high center the front of the locomotive and cause it to derail and stop. The bee was still alive, but.......
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This is where it happened so there were even witnesses to this strange occurrence. :-o
Hitching a free ride on Amtrak.
This is me and my sister on the "Cyrus K. Holliday" ATSF #1 back in the 1950's in Larned, Kansas. Larned was celebrating its Centennial. James Arness, Amanda Blake, and Milburn Stone were brought into town on this working Santa Fe locomotive.
This is me and my sister on top of a Kansas grain elevator when we were even younger yet. I remember being both a little fearful and excited at the same time. It is pretty clear that the railing there was for show and would not have done much good if we had gotten closer to the edge and had slipped or been caught by the wind. Our neighbor operated the elevator and gave our dad and us an opportunity to go up to the top. Probably we shouldn't have been there but it was a treat, and here is the proof we were up there!!!
Here we are again. I don't even particularly remember this but it is clearly along the railroad. Sis has on the same jeans, but otherwise we have different clothes on so it wasn't the same day as when we were on top of the elevator. These are cotton bales so I'm not even sure that this was in Kansas. But a cool picture I think.