Monday, September 17, 2012

It's a twister! It's a twister!!

"Well it was a miracle that no one got hurt today, but that there twister sure did some damage in the yard"  Ted D. Baker, Maryland & Pennsylvania RR Superintendent was quoted saying in an interview in The York Dispatch today.  

Seems like there was a freak weather occurrence where a strong thunder storm produced an F1 tornado that passed through the far end of the M&P's York Yard.  There was very minor damage to buildings, but one of the road's RPO's was obliterated.  "We were working in the engine house when we heard this loud roaring noise approaching.  Just as we got outside to see what the commotion was we saw the twister hit #34 and it looked like a bomb went off inside it! KABOOM! And just like that she was reduced to a pile of splintered timbers!  I've never seen anything like that in my entire life!" Mr. Baker said.  

He went on to explain the RR's plans to rebuild #34 "That old RPO was a piece of junk anyways.  We bought her second hand off eBay and didn't realize from the pictures that the guy who tried to build her had less talent than a chimpanzee trying to do physics!  I mean it was a disaster before it even got wrecked by that twister!  Glue marks all over, crooked doors and windows, lead weights inside that looked like someone dropped some turds, good God that car was a mess!  Thankfully we got her cheap so it wasn't that bad, just figured we'd need to get around to rebuilding her some day"  

How the car looked before the Tornado.


Opposite side.  This side was even worse than the other side!


The aftermath of the twister.


The M&P shop crew is wasting no time in rebuilding #34 and is doing so using more stronger and durable polystyrene. 

Mr. Baker concluded in the interview "We have the original blueprints though and we will recycle all the doors, windows, and end pieces and rebuild her better than ever.  You'll see."

2 comments:

  1. Tell me more about #35. Was it a kit? what brand? do you have plans? Dick Bradley

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  2. Hi Dick,

    It was one of the old Westwood kits that was partially built. I got it in a larger lot of Westwood kits and at first thought I could fix the mistakes but it was turning out to be more work than it was worth. I had made photo copies of the plans a while back so I'm using those to rebuild it out of styrene.

    Ted

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