How to derail a train....eventually.

Found this WW2 instruction film that may be of interest;

 

I'm sure that's been on here before. Of course you'd do it on a curve if you really were doing it.

 

An alternive way of stopping the train would be to blow up several joints. By blowing up the joints you'd damage two lengths of rail at a time. So if you did that over say 6 or 8 joints then you'd put over 360 feet of rail out of action, as they'd all need replacing. Also as in the film "The Train" you could knock out the keys or pull the spikes, thus loosening the rails too boot, creating the added possiblity of derailing and train if it did manage to cross the gap between the rail ends.

 

I think that is more fantasy than reality. I'm told that, on straight track, you can remove all the keys and it will still work, although I 've never seen it put into practice!

 

I suspect that if you removed all the keys but not the fishplates, the fishplates would hold the rails roughly in line and the wheel flanges would push them back to gauge, even if the rails twisted and rotated slighlty.

 

Thing If you'd read the whole reply yo'd note that I said blow the ends [fishplated joints] off several sections of rail as well as knocking the keys out which would damage both rails as well as shortening each by a short length.

 

Back in the 50's, yes I am that old, HMG sent me on a 3 month railway sabotage course. Very little use was made of explosives, it lets them know you are about, but much use was made of what was available and it was quite interesting in how easy it was to wreck both diesels and steam loco's as well as wagon and carriage wheel sets.

No, I am not going to elaborate!

 

Three months was a long time to learn how to do that!