I have one small operating flummox a month - car derails or a loco's front pilot jumps off for some weird reason or a coupler fails - situations where in the past I would have had to crawl through a duck under and open a hatch, etc. However, now I use a three foot long "grabber" to pick up de-railed cars, etc. I can reach nearly everywhere and it is only when I don't trust this device to, say, pick up a heavy loco that is stalled or off the rails, that I have to "duck under" maybe twice a year now.
I have had only four serious accidents in the last seven years (since I have been back into O gauge).
- My Vision Hudson tumped over in a turn for no reason at all: not going too fast, nothing found on the track - never happened again. No damage done, other than embarrassment because DG Jones was visiting that day.
- One of my two Legacy ATSF Northern's jump a curve and fell 40 inches to the floor. Ouch. Still not certain what the cause was but I think I forgot to check the line and there may have been a small razor saw blade on the rails. Damage was extensive but I fixed.
- The anti-derailing failed on a switch and an MTH 2900 Northern de-railed along with nearly the entire train behind it. The switch was destroyed, the loco was not damaged but two PFE Reefers were torn up pretty badly.
- An MTH Premier ABA F3 set with four eighteen inch alum passenger cars behind it drove into the back of four eighteen passenger cars that had come loose from it and coasted to a stop when a coupler failed. The lead A unit jumped off the layout to the floor and the body was ruined and one car was damaged enough it, too, went into the parts bin.
I am satisfied with this "operating safety" record given that I generally run three trains "unsupervised" anytime I am in the train room - just run them up to speed and leave them while I go about whatever I'm working on: maybe an average of two to three hours a day, five or six days a week - works out to something like 15,000 train-operating hours over those past five years, or one accident per 3,750 hours.
