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It's not for entertainment, it's for education!

Many years ago I produced several of these staged car/train collisions for Operation Lifesaver. That included one on the Wheeling & Lake Erie in Canton where we hit an old Cadillac at 40 mph! On that one we staged the car only part way across the crossing, so the locomotive would hit it a glancing blow. That old Caddy was tossed aside like a toy and spun around about four times.

And THAT is the point! A 10,000 ton train running into your car is the equivalent of you driving over a soda can in your car. What happens to that soda can? It gets crushed and you hardly feel it.

Do YOU want to be the soda can?

Last edited by Rich Melvin

Years ago, I took my kids to the Orange Empire Railway Museum and there was a display from Operation Lifesaver. The car was a Nissan Sentra with the passenger side crushed in all the way to the center console. The train that hit it was travelling at 10 miles per hour! The driver survived (she was alone in the car) with minor injuries. That drove the point home really well.

I actually get angry when I read about people running around gates at grade crossings.

This is one of my fave bits:



Mitch

Steller! Always a bit of nifty pivot, that misses the bulls eye. On a Logical note from a person who runs toy trains on the carpet, Why did that not de-rail the engine? I mean, really, I can hardly get over two 022 switches with out going backwards or derail, let alone running over a car on the tracks. Guess shorting out on the tubular Lionel Three-rail, help prevent that kind of wreckage.  A Hotwheels VW will stop my GG1 in a shorted heartbeat, saving the V-dub to drive another day.

@Miggy posted:

Steller! Always a bit of nifty pivot, that misses the bulls eye. On a Logical note from a person who runs toy trains on the carpet, Why did that not de-rail the engine? I mean, really, I can hardly get over two 022 switches with out going backwards or derail, let alone running over a car on the tracks. Guess shorting out on the tubular Lionel Three-rail, help prevent that kind of wreckage.  A Hotwheels VW will stop my GG1 in a shorted heartbeat, saving the V-dub to drive another day.

I asked my father a similar question when I was in fourth grade.  Basically, it's a matter of scale.

If you were to take a Hot Wheels VW and expand it to life size, the walls of the casting would be six inches thick of solid metal, and it would weigh as much as an actual locomotive!

Likewise, if you took an actual automobile and shrank it to Hot Wheels size, the sheet metal would be about the same thickness as gold foil.   

So, if you want to approximate the actual effect of hitting a car in O scale, take that VW, wrap it in tinfoil, remove the tinfoil and hit THAT with the train! 

Mitch

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