I am trying to gather some interesting examples of "Murphy's Law" and scenic railroading (or any kind of railroading, if the example could apply to a tourist train as well)So please let me know any memorable stories about things that went wrong (or things you just worried about going wrong, even if they ultimately didn't happen) involving the engines or passenger cars or engine crews or passengers or government regulators or mechanical shop ... or just about anything else you can think of. I'm not just looking for stories of things that went wrong, though--I would also like to know of any creative solutions that people found to solve these problems.Thanks in advance.

The worst we've had happen was a battery went bad in a locomotive. We tried charging it with a Variac for a while, but couldn't get enough to crank the engine. So we decided to rob a battery from the loco's sister. A battery going bad on an operating day is Murphyesque in itself, but this instance led to a real comedy of errors!Why not use the sister engine? Two reasons, both par for the course when dealing with Murphy. First off, the engine's COTS was expired (our chief mechanic is weird, he won't pay for something until he absolutely has to despite our best efforts to make him think ahead). Second, the loco with the bad battery was fouling the track the other unit was parked on. I've often grumbled that you have to take three cars with you to change your mind in that yard.Anyway, trying to rob the battery from the other engine was when we found out just how heavy those locomotive batteries are! Even two of us lifting (two were all that would fit around the battery) couldn't get he damned thing out. Thanks, Murphy.We cranked up the worn-out military surplus backhoe to use as a crane. Using this, we managed to get a good battery out of the second loco and the bad one out of the first engine. Murphy struck again during this process when we broke a terminal off a perfectly good battery trying to remove it from the loco that was down (note to self -- don't try to lift batteries by the %$#@ terminals). By this time two trips had been cancelled and we were losing pax.And Murphy still wasn't through with us. The backhoe is old and wore out as I noted above. The hydraulics leak down. In the process of raising the boom to compensate for the leak, the boom went up too far and busted one of the loco windows (this is an SW8, with the battery box right behind the cab). Not clear through, fortunately.And the icing on the cake was that we couldn't do the job properly because we were right in front of John Q. Public and had to watch our language!Murphy's Law: If anything can go wrong, it will.Corollary: If nothing can go wrong, you've overlooked something.Corollary to the corolary: Murphy was an optimist.

Thanks, MattThat is a great example ... can you tell me what type of engines were involved? Also, forgive my ignorance, but what is COTS?

Two things to think about if/when faced with a dead battery the next time. In my experience, particularly with an SW-8, you might be able to use a pair of ordinary jumper cables to jumper around the the failed cell or battery to crank the engine. If 8 batteries are enough to spin a 16- or even 20-cylinder engine, 7 should spin an 8-cylinder. And if you have welding cables around, they can be utilized as jumper cables to another locomotive if the cables are long enough. I've done both, and except during the coldest weather, either will work. Lean on the layshaft a bit when cranking, too.

You must have missed the parenthetical comment about the SW8 cab window. Both locos are ex-Army SW8s. We've since gotten two more units, ex-Air Force Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton RS4TC-1As. And STILL been in a position where only one engine was in date (mercifully we haven't had mechanical problems with the one in-date unit again). Good ol' Clif.COTS = Clean, Oil, Test & Stencil the air brakes. Routine air brake service, in other words. Actually, now that I think of it, it wasn't a COTS that had the loco down, it was just a 92-day inspection. The COTS just came due this past summer, and this story happened a couple years ago now. Of course if we'd been able to get her past the dead engine, Murphy dictates that our friendly neigborhood FRA inspector would have shown up and wanted to know why we were running a loco whose blue card was expired.Oh, as for jumpering around the bad cell, we tried that. Again thanks to Clif's... er, FRUGALITY, the other batteries are also weak (have been ever since we've had the loco, which we got in '96). Didn't work -- she wouldn't spin fast enough to catch. And the other engine was far enough away that jump-starting wasn't practical -- buried behind three cabooses and a couple motor cars. We did try to jump-start it off a volunteer's diesel truck which has a 24-volt system. That was funny to watch but not terribly successful, as you might guess.

"If anything can go wrong, it will."What Mr. Murphy meant was that parts need to be designed, manufactured, installed, inspected and maintained so they WILL NOT FAIL. Mr. Murphy worked with aircraft. When things went wrong, parts fell out of the air. By neglecting maintance of aircraft, locomotives, automobiles or any other perverse inanimate device, parts WILL fail. At the most inopportune time. It happens all too often.For more on Murphy and his law, see Carroll Smith's Engineering to Win, Motor Books International. Carroll Smith, renowned race car engineer, should know more than most about Mr. Murphy, Mr. Murphy was his father-in-law.