It's not a cornfield meet

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Just a little headroom. That's all I needed.

So, I moved the previous train in that siding ahead a half a length,
just thinking there's got to be enough open track.

BUT, I DIDN'T Look around the corner (into the next room).

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And, WHAM, there's something just beyond the tunnel under Russell Junction.

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OOPs,

There was a caboose in the tunnel, belonging to a third train parked there.

(The next time that I park a train, I will turn off the toggle to EVERY block that is occupied, not just the block of the engine.)

24

Knocked out a whole bridge girder, out of sight. One car is hanging the next girder. The Mississippi is 6 feet deep here, if I would have painted it muddy blue so you would know.

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And one chemical tanker has 'sunk' to the mud at the bottom of the river.

And it's not six scale feet under water.

It is 40 real inches, to the floor.

And the coupler's air hose has harpooned in to the carpet,
holding the car in this unusual position in the air,
or could I say bobbing on the bottom of the river?

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Those Kadee couplers got to be tough to withstand that.

I had done one special thing with the coupler mounting boxes of my old Athearn tank cars and cabooses.

The underframe and the coupler plate can be flexible, allowing the pocket to open up and the coupler to sag down.

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I use a small wire wrap to keep the parts together.

I didn't have to repair anything.

So, it wasn't exactly a cornfield meet (a head-on). I was lucky that none of these delicate chemical tank cars were broken. In about 1964, I had just one Frontier Chemical tank car that came with my Athearn train set from Nelson Shoe and Hobby in Marshfield. And somehow I broke that delicate plastic that holds the handrail around the top cover. Eventually, I wrote to Athearn asking how to buy one replacement part. And they didn't send an order form and price list, they just promptly sent a free replacement part in an envelope by US Mail (which was a miracle that a delicate part like that didn't get crushed in the mail.) That Frontier car is the same one that is precariously hanging on the girder in a picture above.

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