There are a few more videos from the same US Army Transportation Corps base about the training done by US Army railroaders to repair and run railroads in Africa and Europe. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iqh-jNhkmqineI0.html Some of the other experiments involved sabotage charges to destroy trains. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/abaRicZmu6qlZ6c.html

If there's one thing I learned from this, it's that trains don't actually need rails to run. Track was just invented by rail manufacturers to sell more rails.

Meanwhile, if there's the smallest little bump in my HO track, the whole consist falls off like the economy in 1929

‘The OSS intends to continue experimental operations.’ Translation: ‘We all had fun using explosives and playing with trains and will continue until there is no possible excuse for further work. We’ll film it for science.’

WW2 train: I can cross entire gaps of missing track and still be fine 👈😎👈 Modern train: axle bearing too hot 😢

Us army: it's essentially impossible to derail a train Norfolk southern: hold my beer

A cool thing about the engine used is that is we have two of her sisters, as she’s former N&W No.4 and we still have 6 & 7. Which is a pretty cool bit of trivia imp.

You just get Norfolk Southern to buy out the railroad concerned and bingo, derailment should happen pretty soon. War is a terrible thing.

Amazing what momentum can do and how much effort it takes to actually stop that momentum (or change trajectory)

It depends. Give the Seabees some booze and it would be done within three feet.

Ive watches too many Mythbusters episodes in my life so i fully expected the narrator to go “well, the old iron horse just wouldnt wreck” (massive explosion from an artillery shell fired at the locomotive) “ahhhh much better”

Well ill be damned, the Locomotive in that video is a N&W G class. They are easily identifiable by their Specific Stacks, and the Bellpaire fireboxes, and VERY tall steam domes. 3 of the class even survives. This was likely filmed at the Aberdeen Proving grounds in Maryland, Which was the main testing site for ALOT of things like this during WW2.

Just send the crew of the submarine that sunk a train during WW2

"WHY WON'T YOU DERAIL!?" "Several Dozen Tons of Steel Son, it enables me to maintain traction with the Ground and Carry my weight through your pitiful gaps...you Can't Derail me Jack!"

I remember watching this for the first time at around seven years old and I just remember being so dumbfounded at how a gap that big couldn’t throw the engine off, I was also thoroughly disappointed because tiny me wanted to see an earth shattering kaboom lol

The locomotive: Hey look I made it through! The cars: 9:13

8 year old me building jumps for my lego trains be like.

This is how the ES&D will save on track construction cost.

T.S. Lawrence: "You could have just asked me, you know." U.S. Military: "You were a little bit dead by 1945".

This was actually filmed at a location called Camp Claiborne, it was a military camp in Central Louisiana, near the village of Forest Hill. The camp had its own railroad, the Claiborne and Polk. Which was also assisted by the local railroad, the Red River and Gulf, which is still slightly preserved in the near by Southern Forest Heritage Museum in Long Leaf Louisiana. Most of the artifacts found in Camp Claiborne is found here at the SFHM. There is essentially nothing left from Camp Claiborne, aside from a few concrete roads, and foundation. And the vast emptiness in the video is all but tall trees now. The Army stripped everything out upon the end of the war.

I was hoping you'd get around to this video! One of my favorite "Messing around, for science we swear!" things the US military has done.

Surprisingly, not a lot of Kenosha in this one!

Army: we need to derail a train? Remove some track well that didn't work YT community: Tell Hyce it's a video game he will get it done. This is one of my favorite videos. I have watched it multiple times.

Thermite and a wood mold to cast a derail into the track out of the produced iron seems a much better bet than explosives. Or some easily transported method to BEND the rails into a derail profile, and then spiking it so that the train doesn't simply unbend it.

I guess you need to blow a hole in the track, and then hammer one of the rails towards the centre of the track, so it catches the flange on the wrong side.

This video simulates the best maintained RGS trackage

IMHO it's the narration (tone particularly) that's a Chef's kiss in terms of communicating the message.

Reminds me of Englewood Railway accident, where a string of log cars broke loose on an incline, got knocked off a track by a derail, then managed to rerail itself at the switch after the derail and rolled downhill unrestrained, eventually slamming into a parked speeder.

I remember you talking about this a while ago with kan. It's very interesting how much a train can take and stay on the rails.

Back at BNSF when you worked there (Before ES&D bought them out) you did complain about the bad trackage outside the shop... The reason it wasn't prioritized were probably this video... Bad ties? "No problem" "Slightly missing track? "They just get to test the suspension! Bonus feature!"

2:06 one of the big lessons we learned from WW2 was the need to practice in minute detail any and every little bit of tactics and warfare. in the last big war games before the conflict began one of the changes was going from simulating things on paper (company 5 stopped and check their transmission oil) to doing it IRL where they found it took much longer and then could be done differently to improve many processes.

Knowing the kind of shoddy track that trains even today can run on, I'm not the least bit surprised that a gap in straight track means nothing to them.

Engineer see's 60" Gap... "Aaaah shit! We're in the dirt... oope, never mind."

And trains in the U.S. every week derailing on straight track for no reason...

Shreveport, LA. summer of 87' bored with pennies and RR gravel we decided to try a dozen or so orphaned RR spikes lined up in a row. The traction wheels squeezed. fragmented and exploded into and off the gravel. I can still remember the ringing sound as one of those spikes went flying flying over our heads as we foolishly watched from the woods nearby. It didn't phase that train one bit but I learned a valuable lesson. Get away...

This was an interesting thing to watch; I thought much the same. Of course, the 4005 accident in 1953 shows that curves (even in a smaller setting of a switch in this particular reference) do tend to be 'good' spots for such things to occur.

From my understanding of basic physics, the best time to blow up a section of rail to guarantee a derailment is when the heaviest part of the train is bearing down on the section of rail that has the explosives on it. That way you damage the most highly stressed part of the train AND the rail at the same time. The idea is that any damaged train prevents passage of any undamaged train, even if that undamaged train could have maybe made it over the damaged rail. Target the locomotive, AND the rail, at the same time. Or you know, just wait for a train to go by and poke a hole in the boiler with a Bazooka. Instantly disabled, even if it DOES stay on the tracks it ain't movin.

I've told many people that it is equally impressive how well this stuff stays on the rail, and how easy it is to make something hit the ground. Hell im pretty sure during the "Crazy Eights" runaway, a portable derail was used and whole consist just jumped right over it. Meanwhile, a quarter inch gap on a switch point is great at putting things in the dirt.

The Navy had no problems derailing a train. The USS Barb sent a team ashore in Japan to plant one of the submarine’s scuttling charges under the track, and wired it up with a pressure switch. When the next train came by a few minutes later, it went sky high. The landing party were still rowing back to the submarine, they started to double time it. I think the secret is to not use your explosives until the locomotive is over it.

Another film you might consider a reaction video for was called ‘The Mole,’ also OSS from the same period (and is on the Charlie Dean Archives YT channel). It’s about a nifty photoelectric sensor attached to an explosive with the intent of causing derailments in tunnels. I’d love to know if they ever made it into service before the war ended.

I love how I watched that video on its own the night before because you mentioned it and now I see this pop up. It was fate.

These tests have had me excited since you first mentioned them. Thanks for covering this!

How the explosives are applied can also make a large difference on the damage they do. I saw an old video from the Swiss army where they used hand grenades against rails. In the first test they just placed the grenade next to it, and barely anything happened. In the next test they tied it to the rail (it was a stick-shaped HG 43 for those wondering) with a bit of wire. This time they managed to blow the rail apart (although after seeing this video I doubt a train would've noticed)

There was simply not enough whisky involved

That poor old 2-8-0 was like "Can I go home now! How many times do I gotta run this crap?"

This should be interestimg for any type of train enjoyer !!! Thats such a cool video / tests

I remember seeing War Trains at my local navy museum, with the director and narrator there. I have a signed VHS set somewhere at home. This was always one of my favourite segments of Subvert and Destroy. As an edit: War Trains was a 3 part series, and you can still get it on DVD, I can't recommend it more, so many interesting videos like this one are in it.

Maybe this is why the saboteurs of the kwai river line in WW II blew up the bridge?

Crew of the USS Barb: "Got it, use the scuttling charge."

Hoh, good memes It's always a good day when Hyce uploads.

Been waiting for this !

Should have asked us French. 60cm gauge trench railways were massively used in WWI, carrying ammo and troops on temporary badly laid tracks, and these things are close to impossible to derail. Some of the same kind of railways are still use in harsh condition in sugar cane plantations in indo pacific islands. The amount of abuse these systems can take is tremendous .They actually runs trains on straights with no rails at all.

In the rest of that video they showcase the European style trains of that time where most cars only had two rigid axles and were easily prone to derail. That explains why the rest of world eventually designed their train trucks similar to North American standard. There's also another video from the time that demonstrates an explosive that has a photovoltaic fuse (essentially a light sensor) that was attached to a coupler. It would arm after entering a tunnel, due to lack of light, and would detonate when the train exited the tunnel as the light entering the sensor would trigger the fuse.

Remember this OSS type stuff is limited in long term impact unless it is on a bridge and the crash destroys the bridge. An on tanker told me what the third army did. They had a big hook on the back of a tank. They would drive down the track with the hook ripping out the ties. A few miles of this and the railroad would be out of commission until some major work was done.

USS Barb called. They sunk a train (technically)

I remember Hyce talking about this years ago, exited to finally see it!

This was a really interesting video to watch honestly. Really interesting to see the forces those bogies can take, especially just bouncing directly on the ties, and even the engine not coming off, like goddamn

This video is like The Fat Electrician and a train had a baby. It's brilliant!

Fun fact, the first ever train to fly flew in WWII, and was promptly sunk. USS Barb submarine is still the only submarine to ever be credited for sinking a train

The WWII OSS also had exploding coal. A partisan resistance operative would get exploding lump coal and a paint kit so they could make the exploding coal match the coal in the bunker(s) at the railroad. They would grab some sample coal, paint up the exploding to match and chuck it all back in a bunker to be loaded into a tender, or a furnace or a ??.

I love watching these

Thats incredibly cool! Helluva thing, momentum!

I always learn more things about trains from you

Thats crazy and amazing

I’d LOVE a test like that. I can even think of some ‘in service’ engines I could bring for it….

This is insane!

Sometimes back you had a video and discussion at the museum of how far a curve had drifted out of it original place. Even with that kink the locomotive stayed on the track. Makes you wonder what's going on with the mainline that they have disastrous derailment. I guess for safety sake we need to bring back steam 😂

I can imagine a French resistance fighter blowing a big chunk of rail out and watching as it continues on just fine

I'm sure I mentioned one of my derailments at Lakeside with the #18, about 3 decades ago on the 4th of July, the busiest day of the year. On the curve to come along Harlan, the rails spread. Since it was busy, we were running a little faster than we usually did (12 minutes per trip compared to the 15 normally.) The locomotive cleared but the front truck of the tender derailed. Luckily the coaches remained on the tracks. Water and coal bounced everywhere. All I could do is keep the train stretched as I rolled to a stop to prevent the A/V forces popping a coach truck off. When we brought the #17 up to hook on to my train to pull it back, she slowly walked across the bad track and as the rails spread, she slowly sunk down between the rails. The Master Mechanic was panicked and thought we would have to rerail her too. But I just had John horse her over and he backed her back up on the tracks. I mean it was the perfect rerailer there... So it's the momentum more than anything which overcomes the forces of bad track. The diesel arrived shortly after backing all the way around to where I was. And after walking the passengers back to the other train (#17's) they backed to the depot and we used lining bars and blocks and popped the #18's lead tender truck back on. The mechanics then drove additional spikes into the non-existent ties and they shut down steam for the rest of the day. I pointed out the diesel's trucks were gauged differently (1/4" wide) and would spread the rail more than the steam train's. So I spent the rest of the day sitting on my #18 keeping her warm and eventually, I watched fireworks off in the distance while sitting on the cab roof. The next day after working my paying job I stopped by to see that they dug out 30 feet of track and replaced the ties (poorly of course.) They also decided to swap out the rails. Not going with NEW rails but they swapped them around - by turning the individual rails around. These are rails which have been in that curve for half a century at least. They are curved. What happens when you turn a curved rail around? All the curve is at the joints (at the fish plates.) So they had an extremely superelevated outer rail (1" with 22" gauge) with all the curve bend at the joints. I would have to brace myself on the fireman's side with my feet on the engineer side to keep from sliding off. BAM. BAM. BAM. 3 hard lurches to the right at each fish plate. After this, I got away from doing much with the railroad (my friend John and I were actually working on the big tower there getting it repaired where 2 men with no budget, old ropes, and sheer bravery could.) The following year I was done, never returned to work there on the railroad again. They broke both steam locomotive frames and I think the diesel took damage too. A few years later I visited with my wife, my friend John and his wife and we rode the railroad and yep, that track was STILL trash. And to this day, steam is dead there. All because they had a moron master mechanic who didn't move the outer rail to the inside and the insider rail to the outside so they would remain curved the right direction and the other, unworn, side of the ball of the rail could be used. This is the same moron master mechanic who made a special track measuring device (took a day to make it) welded up nicely and all. It was a l-shaped device with rollers on the left side and a measuring "rod" across to the other rail. A long handle allows you to push it. He did this to spite me telling him the track is wide. You can see the tender truck hunt side to side so you KNOW it's wide. He said only a couple places were wide. I asked him where he measured to make his mark on his measuring stick that went across. He showed me where he put it on the tracks at the water tower and made a chalk mark. I pulled out my tape measure and measured. 23" OOPS. He just looked at it. Picked up his rod and left. Didn't say a word. Didn't fix the track either.

As a former Army Combat Engineer of the 21st Century, I gotta go dig out my Demolitions Handbook and see just what the modern schema is for rail demolition.

"Hey part of the tracks missing" "Is it a straight section?" "Yes" "Is the ground still there?" "Yes" "Put her fill throttle shes good for 50"

Hyce is about to take things into his own hands.

Hi Mark this was an absolutely hilarious eye opener! If I saw that in a Hollywood movie I’d have not believed it! I’d think typical movie making fiction! But like you said Mark momentum and weight all make for just a bumpy glide over the rail abyss for choo choo! OMG! Professor so enjoy your commentary; thanks for this latest learning video and, as always, cheers to you!

This footage was going around in war game communities for a little while. Impressively difficult to derail simply by moving the tracking was something. I suspect if you removed a shorter piece and removed ballast you could just topple it to its side. More than anything else, destroying the locomotives would really harm an enemy, even if the cargo remains intact.

Reminds me of some of the behind the scenes footage of the 2nd Zorro movie with Antonio Banderas. For the big climax of the movie with a runaway train full of nitroglycerin, the final scene was done with models as using the real deal they'd dressed up for the movie was a no-go for obvious reasons. Anywho, the special effects team lead for the scene said it was actually very difficult to get the train to derail like they wanted it to, hitting the earthen mound at the end of the track and rolling over into a big pile-up and explosion, touched off by the nitro blowing up from the jolt followed shortly thereafter by the boiler letting go. They specifically mentioned that steam locos are really good at keeping their center of gravity on the wheels, and they had to resort to using weights high up in the models to throw off their balance as well as a few other tricks, as for the first try or two the train just wanted to keep rolling straight in a line through the dirt upright after coming off the tracks instead of rolling over and accordioning together.

I like the cheeky tone they take in the original film, but the way they delivered voiceover back then was so dry it's hard to tell he's yanking your chain, because he knows that train isn't going to derail.

I have to think that gyroscopic action helps keep the wheels going the same direction (conservation of angular momentum and all that). It would make the wheels resistant to turning suddenly. It's possible that the weight of the loco/cars overwhelms this but I would think it would help keep the train on the track in the event of missing rail.

Ah! I love this film!

Just knowing how much weight is there and watching steel on steel hit like that, it almost makes my soul leave my body knowing just how hard of a force that would have felt being on that locomotive

Tbh, I think the main takeaway a commando or someone else who’d sabotage a train would be to either do the rails on a curve, or if that’s not possible, rig the explosives to a pressure switch or the like. I’ve seen this video myself, and I was blown away by how hard it was to derail it. IIRC, I decided you’d be best off rigging the explosives to deform the track, instead of just removing it.

"Something has gone wrong again." I think that's a Hyce-ism. 🙂

It really does make wonder how bad American's infrastructure is to cause so many train wrecks considering how hard it is to derail a train. Great video Hyce!

Considering the diameter of the wheels, I wasn't surprised that a 12in gap had minimal effect at these speeds. As for the third test, the 36in gap, it goes to show just how little suspension a steam locomotive has built in to it and just how much the trackbed does to give a smooth ride.

That engineers got a pair, thats for sure.

9:09 probably had a LIGHT fire... just enough to run the air comp to keep the brakes off

Oh, my crew trainer showed us this in our new hire orientation!

that engine has a better record than your entire derail valley career

Caught that old video at the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum a few days ago. Weird coincidence. LOL

This is a perfect example of how suspension truely acts. Most people tend to think its about ride comfort. When it reality the job of suspension is to mantain a contact with whats below it as an equal and opposite reaction. When the wheels fall off the rails the suspension is forcing that wheel to contact the ground so the wheel doest wobble as much. Im probably not explaining it very well

This was awesome Mark you really don’t think ahoy it until you see it. By any chance do you know what areas base that film was made at?

Probably done on the "Crime and Punishment" - the Claiborne and Polk Military Railroad early in in World War Twice

Amazing! Thar cracked me up 🤣

Hey hyce i was part of the US Army 757th railway expeditionary center, what was once the Army's great railway operational battalions. Sadly a shadow of its former self. I highly recommend reading into the US Army's railroad history especially during WW2. If you ever get a chance to go to Fort Eustice, the training grounds for Army rail, they also have a great little museum full of the history of army railroading.

Speaking of railway sabotage, might be worth looking at Ireland during the Irish Civil War (1922-24). A lot of derailments, sabotage and attacks on trains and railway infrastructure. Two that immediately spring to mind on straight track derailment, both in the same area of Killurin. One was on 15 August 1922, when two lengths of rail were removed just within a tunnel. A goods train exiting ran on another 30 meters before reaching soft ground and turning over, the coal wagons it was pulling piling up behind it. There's at least one photo during recovery, fairly impressive looking. The other was on 10 July 1922, when an engine managed to jump a three meter gap blown out of a bridge, brought its tender with it and came to rest about it's own length from the gap, at a right angle to the track and with the left leading drive wheel overhanging an embankment. The first wagon behind fell back first into the gap, but the coupling held, probably saving the engine going down the bank. This was this engines second major incident, and another would come before the war had ended! Some of the recovery efforts are also very interesting, as there seems to have not been any heavy recovery equipment available other than jacks. Lots of use of sleepers to make cribs, rafts etc!

Just a switch derailed a big boy, A bunch of explosives took out the tender of a little 2-8-0 Yeah makes sense.

If they needed to wreck a train in WWII, they should have just asked the crew of USS Barb (SS-220). There is a reason that her battle flag has a train on it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, momentum is a hell of a drug.

I work on the UK railway and I would just need a Hammer to knock out the Pandrol Clips or if the Fast clips I would use a heel bar. take enough clips out and nothing is holding the Rail to the Sleeper train comes along the Rail gauge is forced to widen and the wheel drops into the 4 foot. You could mess around with the points and the signals.

I survived a cornfield meet- derailed right quick. But that army video is cool!

We need a bigger video of these... but considering the state of affairs worldwide, that would be like doing videos on the US army improv munitions guide.