Question about derailments

David: While I don't run on Fastrack, I'll give you my general experience with three rail derailments.

My opinion is the middle rail is not an impediment to an engine or car careening off the rails if enough momentum is available or there are multiple cars involved. I had my boyhood 2343 Santa Fe F3 take a header off my boyhood table onto a concrete basement floor that left a crack up the nose from the anti-climber to the headlight; and that engine had "good" MagneTraction from the factory and was running on Lionel tubular track at that time.

My advice plan for any eventuality while pondering your levels of risk you're willing to take on a derailment. The weight of Gauge trains does help stay on the rails, but excess speeds due to too-tall gearing always lurks in the background.

Any derailment runs the risk of overshooting the edge of the layout. In the case of 0 gauge, the heavier equipment tends to want to continue moving after that derailment. The solution is to either crawl at slow (some say prototypical) speed or be safe and put up a guard rail / other barrier. The type of track in my experience doesn't much matter. I built a perimeter guard rail out of 1/2" PVC pipe with a jacket of 3/4" pipe insulation on my layout - and sorry, I don't have the capacity to do pictures. Some people here use plexiglass.

If you can leave some extra space from the edge of the layout to the track it's always a good idea for those reasons mentioned above.

It's also good if your adding scenery to your layout.

Having said that. I have been running my trains at scale speeds for 15 years.

The few derailments I've had were operator induced, by things like bumping one train into another because I forgot a switch was thrown.

I modeled h.o. back in the 90s. There was always some random derailment for no apparent reason no matter how perfect track and switches were laid.

I've not experienced anything like that with fastrack and the turnouts are non derail so no issues there either

O Guage stuff just runs reliably, and that center rail helps prevent the herky jerky operation of smaller scales that require impeccably clean track.

Thank you folks so much for the input/suggestions. Now that you mention it, I do see a lot of layouts with plexiglass around the edges. I run at slow speeds - Legacy helps with that. My grandson is a teenager, so he isn't interested in setting speed records.

I completely agree with the previous posts, particularly the second sentence of ARTYOUNG's post.  Here are a few of my additional thoughts:

• Derailments most often occur when equipment is passing over turnouts (switches).  Keep your turnouts properly adjusted so that the switch point is snugly up against the stock rail in both positions.
• Another common factor in derailments is long cars coupled to short cars, or light cars coupled to heavy cars.  Derailments from these two factors almost never occur on straight track.  They tend to occur on reverse curves, especially at crossovers between tracks.  
• So, if you maintain your turnouts and try to make up your trains with the heavy cars on or near the head end, you'll reduce the need to worry.

If you are using DCS , TMCC, or Legacy control, you can set a maximum speed for each of your locomotives, and then one more potential factor will be eliminated.

Just as a quirk to file for possible future reference about derailments:

One of my top ten most dependable scale steam locomotives, a scale Lionel Dreyfus Hudson, has not left the layout for a decade of running. However, at first, it was very finicky about switches, no matter the manufacturer (Lionel or Ross) and would derail going into the switch and taking the curve outward or , especially, when backing thru one.

I finally figured out what was the cause, by operating the train slowly, with my nose and eyes approx. 1" from the track/switches. It was the wheels on the scale tender, or rather, the shrouding over them. That shrouding would permit the wheels to swing only so-far; any sharper of a turn and the shrouding would force the tender to kind-of lift the locomotive partially off the rails and derail.

Solution? I removed several switches on that route and eventually gave the Dreyfus a switchless route to travel. We have been happy ever since.

FrankM

I also once operated in HO and still do in N. Trust me. While a little N scale locomotive weighing less than one pound and costing $100 to $200 won’t like a drop to the floor, a 10- to 15-pound O gauge locomotive costing $300 to $1,500 will like it a lot less, as would you.

Don’t run the track too close to the edges without adequate protection.

David,

The center rail will not prevent any loco from leaving the tracks.   What I would suggest (and which I have done on my layout) is to make a retaining system all along the outer edges.  While I can't get to the layout now to take a picture it is made exactly like the 3 cable retaining system used on highways to prevent crossovers.

The posts are made from hardwood dowels woth 3 appropriately spaces holes. For the cable I used stainless steel wire rope. I don't now remember the dimension of the dowels or wire rope but can get it if you would like.  

My table height is somewhere around 38" with the upper mainlines another 9" above the table making for a long way down to a concrete floor covered with foam pads.  Since I put up the retaining system I've had about 4 derailments all of which were grandpa error not paying closer attention to grandson.  Nothing  hit the floor although one of the derailments hit it so hard it cracked the dowel.

Ed

I have nothing close to the layouts you are using, I am running O27 and have tight corners. What I've done is make some barrels from dowels for 2 dangerous corners I have. (See pictures). They're much too rudermentry for your usage but mayve it sparks an idea.