Guys,
I don't know what's come over me, but remember the original Adams Family 60's sitcom they had filmed in black and white format, two berkshire engines in a head on crash? Does anybody have the skillset to show us? That was a blast, I imagine it cost a fortune to redo!
Mike Maurice
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no......
I never would want to, however last night I forgot I had a switch open to a siding.
I just backed a steam engine into the siding and a double A diesel unit went into the siding. Fortunate for me the diesel was moving slow and no damage was done. 
I would never damage any train. I have had a few unintentional ones that did do some damage to one of my engines and I was not happy for a couple of weeks. So the answer to your question is a big NO! and I Never will do something that stupid!
Nope.
Not intentionally.
No, no, no, no!
At least not on purpose....
I'd love to. it's not the crash, it's the blowing up the bridge!
Not intentionally.
Unless the engines in question violate your "Isle of Denial" paint scheme rules, right Matt? 
You could stage an "Addams Incident" by posing equipment in a wreck-like fashion without harming anything.
Although you'd need a fair amount of Photoshop-fu to add the flames and smoke via digital fakery.
As for "for real for real" wrecks? No, I try to avoid that. In fact, I think I have at least one locomotive from my carpet-central days (a K-Line 4-6-2) that has never been involved in a derailment.
---PCJ
NEVER
Art
Seems like only an idiot would do it. this is real life not Hollywood.
Definitely not anything that's expensive or has a lot of personal value! I can understand maybe a few junky engines that were made for taking abuse from little kids like some postwar engines, or even some Generals in an old-fashioned staged head on like the real world did, but definitely not anything that's over $300, value wise or expense wise.
YES I would love to do it.If I were 8 years old.Nick
Of course,why else would a grown man play with trains?
Dan
Thank you Dan986. That was choice. That really says it all. Well done.
Now that you mention it. ..it would be fun to buy a couple of junkers. The explosion would be a little beyond me though. 
No, worked to hard to keep nice trains. The show was funny, but that's about it.
Never as an adult. But, as a boy of 9 or 10, my younger brother and I would stage head-on collisions between the 675 freight train and the 2356 Southern AA passenger train--the diesels always won. We were careful enough to stage these collisions on the inner loop of the layout so no trains hit the floor. Apart from the steamer occasionally tipping over with the tender, and some minor derailments of other equipment, it wasn't very exciting visually--we always anticipated more action than actually occurred.
Both trains ran this Christmas and are in remarkably good cosmetic and mechanical condition--nothing broken, the AA noses are fine, a bit of paint loss on the 675 cowcatcher, but that's about all the damage we caused.
Yup, that's what LEGO trains are for. Then you can rebuild them and do it again! The fun never ends.
Sounds like fun, but I value my trains too much.
However, if you look in the boxes under the tables at train shows, you will realize that Adams Family style train wrecks must be enjoyed by a large number of enthusiasts.
Bob
Seems like only an idiot would do it.
Are you referring to the original poster?
When I was a kid; not now.
Don
No, not even when I was five years old.
fess up! Have you ever had an inkling to do an Adams Family style crash scene?
Never, not even when I was a kid.
There was one episode I remember laughing at when I was a kid, however, where someone suggested to Gomez -- after one of the Lionel crash scenes -- that he should buy a real railroad. Gomez got this faraway look in his eyes and said with that idiotic zeal: "Boy! Imagine what you could do with those babies!"
I'm sure Lurch grumbled afterward...
No, I loved the show when it came out - BUT - I used to cringe when I watched the wrecks (Berkshires ! F-3's ! *sob* ). Felt the same way when the 1st movie came out as well (that other magazine had an article on the layout that was built for the movie).
For me, it is all about making things, not destroying stuff. The idea of staging a crash sickens me. Isn't there enough evil and hardship in this world already?
Joe.
Seems like only an idiot would do it.
Are you referring to the original poster?
If it fits anybody's thinking then yes.
I did it with my HO trains, minus the explosives.
I knew the Lionels were something special from little on up. I never had the thought to crash them, and got very upset with Dad when he did.
No not on purpose.
Wow! the reactions here are so reserved that I will refrain from fully responding.
Can you buy a plunge-style detonator without ending up on a watch or no-fly list of some kind these days?
Of course,why else would a grown man play with trains?
Dan
Ah am a-pretty sure that even the Gomez crash scene isn't actually a crash if you watch it carefully. Seems to be a bit of quick editing where the engines are on the bridge in a stationary position already. Only one is seen moving and it comes to a stop.
Even the newer movie shows a large flash and no actual collision. Is that a Lionel Hudson?
All that said, I bet some of that plastic Marx stuff could handle it.
When I had one Lionel train as a kid, I didn't dare screw it up because I knew I'd never get another.
When I was into HO as a teen, it was all track power, everything moved the same direction and speed, so crashing anything never came to mind then.
Now that I have On30 with DCC, I could now have a 'cornfield meet' but now I'm back to the original concept that it'd be tough to explain to my wife why I need new parts for one of my ten-wheelers after the crash as the detail parts up front are pretty fragile, I'd think.
Also, I had my fill on destroying things on your tax dollars through the Army.
I never did any crashing, but I did fool my big brother once. We both had American Flyer sets and I would sometimes ask to use his because it had a steam engine. I was always very careful with both of our trains. One time I set up a straight track and parked both locos nose to nose, scattering the cars in a zig-zag pattern off the tracks behind the locos. When he saw that, he had a fit and even though I explained that it was a setup, it was a long time before I could borrow his train again.
A friend always asks if he can crash the trains when he comes over. I always tell him that if he brings his own trains, we can crash them. He says that is no fun. I say he must have been a bratty kid in his childhood.
We used to do that kind of thing all the time as kids. And the faster the better! 
Not so much these days though.
Rod
No.
I don't think I will respond
This makes me cringe!
And this is a little bit more fun:
No!
.....
Dennis
My son and my Nephew did at Christmas. They are 28 and 29. I made sure before they came over I removed all the good trains on the table and replaced them with ones that I didn't care about.
I have a lift bridge that I am about ready to blow up!!! It only needed a controller, said the seller.......
First everybody has a price. Second I would safely say Most of us would never damage a train for laughs, We are not a bunch of Gomez's. Third we pay a lot of money for our beloved trains..a lot of money(so says the wife)..e.g.. You discover you have two of your favorite RR boxcars, and your a kinda guy like me that knows that will drives him crazy, same car with the same number and you bought it twice so you decide to put this car up for auction on the bay. It sells for 1000.00 bucks. Now where is that second car ???,
So for some reason some Gomez wants to see a train blow up and film it, I say No problem( I have a few starter sets I will not miss.) I will shoot it ASAP, two trains running into each other and crash and burn in HD 1080, it will be 5000.00, we take cash or check.
We all have a price.
never have
No, not intentionally.
No Thank-you, for the big crash.....
I almost forgot about this guy's stop-motion wrecks. Yes, they're HO, but ol' Gomez wishes he could stage wrecks like this in real time 
..and this last one, which supposedly went viral:
---PCJ
Guys,
Do you actually know what an inkling is? It is a desire, (in me unfulfilled) to see the destruction, but as I am an adult now, and I have several expensive train sets, I will not try this.
Suffice it to say that I got this all out of my system at 10 years old when I lit my model planes on fire and watched them burn or when I did wheelies into the bushes or blew up (with firecrackers) toy soldiers that I had just purchased. I never actually tried this with my American Flyer trains and I'm glad that I never did (as they are worth much more to me sentimentally!
Ah those bygone days of our youth, alas they are gone (47 years ago). Thanks to the guys that posted movies of the scenes from the Addams Family you are the best!
Mike Maurice
not until now. This got me thinking about picking up a few post war steamers and maybe a few cherry bombs
To dangerous to even think about, even outside.
Art
Heck yeah! How about inviting me over for your next operating session?
A rule laid down my Dad when we were growing up "If you can't afford to lose it, DON"T PLAY WITH IT!" The lesson in that saying is that no toy is so valuable you can't live without it.
If I decide to rebuild my display this year I may just have to pit the Southern Crescent against the Milwaukee Special on the top tier as a kick off to the demolition. Unfortunately the bridges up there wouldn't come down without some pretty powerful charges that would probably take out the closet too. I'll have to add another task to research list for the new display.
Gentlemen,
One of my 1st MOS's was 17 Mike, MI Unattended Grounds Sensor Specialist, all the Sensors we used were for setting off Claymores, Daisy Cutters & such, we got to blow up the real stuff, in the Viet Nam era. Man if I had the money I would blow them up just like on the Adams family, especially if Carolyn Jones ask me too.
PCRR/Dave
If I could find a couple of '11xx' shark fin Scouts that actually ran, maybe. Otherwise, no, not on purpose.
Of course, there was the incident on the South Hills Shopping Center layout when TMCC first came out. We were demoing two trains operating independently on the same track, and discovered the chicken wire used to hold up one mountain blocked the TMCC signal. So the loco kept going when it was supposed to stop, then reverse direction to avoid a collision. Ooops!
No. Not even as a kid. I have a heart condition along with
other ailments. Watching an Adams Family Style crash scene
would put me six feet under.
To envision a Lionel Hudson or GG1 meeting head on, oh
mercy I would rather root for the Boston Red Sox. Frighting.
Many thanks,
Billy C
Perhaps we should adjust our outlook in these modern times, and send in all our dead
CW-80s for a suitable Youtube explosion video? 
We never blew anything up at the club but we did do something that was out of the ordinary We have a bascule lift bridge that doesn't have any train control So if a train is coming when the bridge is going up it will fly. So one day there was about ten grown men having a contest to see how high a flying train would go and still land on the tracks. We used a Lionel Mexican GP38 and it was still landing on the tracks at 2.5 inches of bridge lift. The way we were reacting at the landings was like we were ten years old.
Now you're talking. I'm proud of you guys.
Back then they were $50 toy train sets - cheap enough and common enough for a TV show to destroy a couple for fun. It is amazing that something that was done only once in the series is one of the most remembered things.
No.
Hey bmoran! Thanks for the train crash videos, that was some of the funniest stuff that I've seen in awhile! Love how the seemingly endless stream of boxcars keep piling up.
my brother and I did Gomez Addams style crashes with flaming debris in the hoppers for added effect. That is until some dinner guests smelled "a burning odor" coming from the basement where their kids and us were playing with the trains.
the stuff hit the fan BIGTIME! but my parents' guests still wanted to see the trains run
This is FREQUENTLY requested by Children when we're operating the club modular display. The thought of intentionally wrecking locomotives is out of the question.
Gilly
I would wreck any train that had ERIE LACKAWANNA on the sides..... 
NOT Adams family....
BUT "Silver Streak" made an impression with me!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cyhBroQsNA
esp with the Girder & Panel sets!
all the time!!!
I have more than a few old (from mid 60's) junkers in my lineup, including junked and broken freight cars. Now and then we'll put a couple trains together and run them on a section of my layout with auto-reversing loops and crossovers until they spectacularly crash. Sometimes it's a t-bone, sometimes a head on.
Nothing bad ever happens.
To answer another poster, I too would run hotwheels towards each other. The best was when they'd have a head on crash in the loops.
As Warren Oates (Sgt. Hulka) so famously said, "Lighten up, Francis!"
You mean that's not gonna be an operating accessory in the next catalog
Not even the detonator?
That's the beauty of the stop-motion version. Nothing has to get damaged, and you can animate the resulting zig-zag pileup just like the real thing 
---PCJ
No, absolutely not, no way whatsoever would I consider it today.
I will however fess up that in 1955 my brother (8) and I (6) did some "scientific experiments" to determine what the effect would be running 2 engines at each other into a lincoln log wall at the same time at full speed. While I really don't remember the outcome of our experiment, I do remember quite clearly what happened when my father came down to the basement and saw what we were doing. All I can say it wasn't a pretty picture as their was much yelling and walloping to be had. Needless to say our experimenting days were over, forever.
Ed
Ed, Yes I remember using an ol' Lionel junker running full speed into a wall of red American Bricks built across the tracks. For awhile there I thought there were no hoodlums on board.
Let's step this up a tad.....Anyone ever do a real fire scene? Like a wooden trestle with some of the free cereal box HO freight car prizes positioned on top? Can't find the B&W photos.
Let's step this up a tad.....Anyone ever do a real fire scene? Like a wooden trestle with some of the free cereal box HO freight car prizes positioned on top? Can't find the B&W photos.
WIbuildinthwood trestlsformyboutsidesuspended layout, my youngest son Mark was helping me, and he suggested we do some fire damage on one of the sections. He did the burning, and to complete the scene, we included a pallet of new beams and a work crew.
Don
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. I believe va va voom is the term!
