IT's TEAM TRACK TUESDAY!!! Share your team track photos here!
Team tracks are a vital part of real railroad day to day operations. Team tracks found in remote rural, small town, and large city locations accommodate the unloading of virtually all kinds of freight cars. ... some passenger train head end equipment ... and MOW equipment as well.
On Saturday evening as I was getting ready to set up Team Track One with a scene for this week's TTT, I was running trains as I worked and low and behold a Sante Fe boxcar, rolled through the TT One switch just a second before the P&BR VO 1000 switcher entered the switch on the intersecting track. COLLISION!!! The switcher fell to the right on an angle but not touching the adjacent building ... it was in perfect balance. The boxcar derailed but stayed upright. AND there it was my TTT story. I put some fire engines in place and a B&O MOW pickup, put figures in place and grabbed the camera. Just as in real life ( and we model real life ... right? ) accident happened on the my railroad. It was a fluke thing that the locomotive kept its balance and did not lean up against the building ... there was about a scale ft ( quarter inch ) between the locomotive and the building. LOL!! So here is the complete story with photos as it appeared in the Patsburg Daily Trumpeter.
This week on the Free State Junction Railway's team track one in Lower Patsburg, a run away Santa Fe boxcar ran through the Team Track One switch into the path of a Patapsco and Back Rivers VO 1000 switcher which was on a transfer run. Evidentaly a rail worker did not set the derail after the car was originally set out. There will more than likely be a full investigation by the Safety Superintendent and the ROW Super.
Since locomotive fuel was leaking and the tank car right behind the locomotive was carrying highly flammable liquid, the Patburg Fire Dept. was called to Team Track One as was Big Hooker, the railroad's heavy crane. The area citizens, however, were not evacuated. It took wreck crews 9 and a half hours to get the locomotive righted, back on the track, and the box car moved to another track ... good thing the car was empty! The daily west bound Fast Mail pulled by a N&W J class was majorly delayed because of the derailment. It took just over one hour before the dispatcher was able to arrange clear tracks so the Fast Mail could back up two miles to Locust Junction and take the secondary main westward. Luckily there were not injuries! ( Click on photos at bottom of this post to view captions )
Lets see your team track photos. If you miss posting today, now worries, post any day of the week! Have a wonderfully fun and creative week!! See ya next week on the TEAM TRACK! 
