**
I don’t believe it is illegal to destroy, or devalue U.S. currency. The government makes a tidy profit on seigniorage. It is only illegal to deface currency with fraudulent intent. For example, in their first year of issue, V nickels were easily modified and passed off as five dollar gold pieces. Also, a lot of rare date coins are “created” by modifying common date versions.
Therefore, the coin rolling machines at Disney World are just fine with Uncle Sam.
I’ve heard somewhere that the law was created because at that time, the metal in the penny was worth more than $0.01, so people would melt pennies down and sell them because they were worth more that way.
Anyways, one time my brother put a penny on a track. It ended up looking exactly like what you get from one of those machines at disneyland, except there was no imprint on it, both sides were smooth.
I had a coin shop. In the early 1970’s a little old lady came in to sell some coins. Her prized posession was a penny which had obviously been run over by a train. This shop was in Canton, Ohio, home of Pres. Wm. McKinley.
She said, “this penny was put on the tracks by my grandmother as McKinley’s funeral train came by.”
I said, “no m’am, this penny was run over by Garfield’s funeral train. And, as such, isn’t worth anything.”
She was crushed.
Of course, a train-flattened penny is just a flat penny. But I"m sure that I’ll pay for that someday.
Just want to mention that the major railroads don’t look kindly on trespassers these days, so it’s not as easy as it used to be to flatten pennies without getting in trouble with the cops.
>>I read somewhere a few years back that a typical modern double diesel-electric weighed ~375 tons, but can only find a couple of mentions of locomotives weighing 120-125 tons.<<
Not that this is particularly essential info, but during my railroad days one of my duties was to to operate a weigh scale, and the eight-wheel EMD switchers operated by the terminal line I worked for averaged around 275,000 lb. (or approx. 138 tons). 12-wheel road locomotives can be somewhat heavier, as they spread their weight over two additional axles. Preferred axle loading for US heavy freight lines ranges from 40-50 tons/axle, so one can work out the max. allowable weight from there.
Ba-dum-dum.
Thank you folks, he’ll be here all week. Don’t forget to tip your waiters and waitresses, and drive home safe!
My Dad… now 68 lived next to some railroad tracks as a child… He told me of squashed coins and dead rats cut in half and also of his friend who decided to put a found railroad spike on the track. Nearly derailed the train and he was pulled out of school in the middle of class by an angry investigator.
Moral? Stick to low denomination coins and small dead animals.
Ohhhhh… think how thin a solid gold coin would get though!
If gold prices keep dropping, it may reach the point where the entertainment value of finding out would be worth it …
During my stint in the Army, I once had the opportunity to pull guard duty on a freight train. I lived in a caboose for 2 weeks! Anyway, I had a lot of time to discuss trains with the engineer and his assistant (fireman, I think they still call them)… and I remember them telling me that anything that would cause the wheels to actually lift off the track more than about and inch and a half poses serious danger to the train. They don’t have to shift much to cause a derailment. I didn’t sleep too well after they told me that…
Try this;
Place a nail (a regular size one, not a spike) on the track. be sure to put it in tha middle of the shiny band down the track, with the head facing in the direction of the train’s passage.
What you wind up with is a flattened nail that looks remarkably like a small sword. Especially if you wrap twine or something similar around the “haft” after it’s flattened. One of the coolest things to do in Bakersfield as a young kid. That, and setting fires. 
You really might want to get back a ways when you do this.
Peace,
mangeorge
The way we did it was to place a strip of paper on the track, lay pennies on the paper, place another strip of paper over them, then use masking tape on the whole caboodle. That way you got flat pennies that didn’t fly away and without sticky residue. Of course, we used to also chuck stuff at the train, and run an aluminum bar between the rails to set off the cross lights. Little shits we were.
–Tim
So that’s how the crossing lights work, continuity. I should remember that. It might be useful one day…
This discussion has been most enlightening to me (I’ve always lived in suburbia, a mile from the nearest railroad track - which was elevated anyway… but I digress.)
However, it begs the obvious question: If a penny actually poses no harm to a train, where did the legend start that it would the train to derail? A Snopes search for certain key words came up empty.
Thanks.
I’ve done the penny thing, and what everyone else has said is true; you either get a flattened, cool-looking penny, or nothing at all. Occasionally, the penny will kind of get flattened into the track; look around the place your putting pennies on, and see if you can spot ancient coins embedded in the track. Kinda cool. Anyway, my father was telling us about when he was a kid, and he and his siblings used to do this. After tiring of coin-flattening, they decided to try a rock. Outcome: the rock exploded. “Cool!”, they thought. Next, they put a piece of sheet metal on the rail. Baaaaaaad move. Outcome: one slightly derailed train, and a VERY angry engineer. Fortunately, nobody was hurt (I’m pretty sure it was a very small freight train), but you can bet they never tried THAT again. So be careful with trains.
Not derailing per se, but I’ve heard from my uncle (a big railfan) that if you find a locomotive sitting in the yard, and wedge a penny under each drive wheel, in front of it and behind, that the wheels will just spin in place, rather than lift the train over the thickness of the pennies. Confirm or deny, Rocket88?
Also, the price of gold shouldn’t have any bearing on squashing it on the tracks: Squashed or not, it’d still retain its full mass, so you could always sell it afterwards at whatever the normal price is for gold.
I’ve made a lot of these.
The pennies get soo cool- They are totally flat, but the picture of Abe still shows because the tarnish is different around his profile. When you buff the penny on your shirt, the picture fades away!
Be very careful to stand way back! The penny will shoot out and be some yards away when you find it.
I’m enjoying this thread, but I’m kinda surprised that the mods allow it. Illegal tresspassing and all…and sheesh, if someone would happen to derail a train as a direct result of information and ideas learned in this thread…my gosh…think of the liability!
I had train tracks running through my backyard as a youth…I miss the sounds of the train in the middle of the night…friends think I’m nuts because I want an apartment near the railroad tracks…but anyway…
I too have made several unique combinations of dimes, nickels and pennies by stacking them on the rails, Dimes worked the best, they became really nice ribbons of metal…Not one derailment.
Even when the GI Joe action figure was put there the train just kept rolling. This was of course to put him out of his misery, he had been burned beyoned recognition in a heated battle…something involving gasoline I think, and maybe a few firecrackers.
Ahhh Youth.
I lived close to some tracks for a while when I was a kid, and had an apartment next to the BN switchyards in Missoula as a student. Somehow trains aren’t as annoying as an equal sound level in highway noise or airport noise.
A train squirted oil all over the place and started brush fires along a couple miles of track once - a lot of local people in my small town were putting them out. My mother was mad at me because somebody talked me out of my shirt to use to help beat out the brush fires, and well, everybody else was using their shirts (I got told to run back into town to tell more people to come help. My father and the neighbors were interested in the brush fire. My mother mainly wanted to know what had happened to my shirt).
Ever notice how ties are spaced exactly wrong so that it’s awkward to walk on them?
Two points - you’d be likely to lose the coin as it got smooshed into an irrecoverible coating on the rail or shot off into the weeds, and it would be much harder to trade an amorphous blob of gold than a recognized coin that you can flog on the market for a well known price. I’m assuming, of course, an “investment” coin that sells for very little over the price of the gold. If we’re talking about a coin with collector value, you’re destroying that in any case. And, of course, I was making a facetious comment about the current trends in the price of gold anyway.
Quoth KrispyOriginal:
While placing pennies on railroad tracks may, certainly, entail trespassing, it’s not a necessity. There are plenty of places where train tracks are publicly accessible. As for derailment, the consensus in this thread is that a person should not place a large object on the tracks, as this might be hazardous.