Dealing with Inevitable but Occasional Derailments!

Click on each image for a closer look!
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All railways have the occasional derailment. It is a fact of life for flanged wheels on steel rail that occasionally the best laid plans come to naught and the wheels hit the ballast. It is not so much a matter of "whether" you have a derailment as "when" and the planning of how exactly you get (in our case) a hot steam locomotive weighing some 3/4 of a ton back where it belongs expeditiously needs to be in place well ahead of time.
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The two photos shown above (by Stephen Gardiner) show how we do it at Roundhouse Park. The black steel plate forms a ramp with guides intended to allow the locomotive to be pushed as shown or winched back into place in one move without the need for lifting of any kind. Full-sized locomotives (like our #4803 and #7020) carry heavy cast-steel devices (see photos below of #4803's rerailer) using similar principles to deal with one axle at a time.
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Posting by Michael Guy; Pictures by Stephen Gardiner and Russ Milland
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