Life during a KAMRI open house can be full of surprises. Something as simple as running trains can go a bit haywire to say the least.
Question 1: What is the effect of a long cold winter period of very low humidity on wood?
Answer 1: It shrinks!
Question 2: What is the effect of a good heating system on metal?
Answer 2: It swells!
Therefore the tie breaking question: What is the effect on a KAMRI open house?
And the answer is: Derailments, uncouplings, and picked switches!
How may you ask does this happen? Well the wood module shrinks and the tracks swell. This builds up just like two tectonic plates trying to slide by each other. Therefore something just has to give. Well it did.
We found no fewer than a dozen locations where the track had warped or pulled away from the roadbed. There where around 6 locations where the 5 inch connector tracks between modules had started busting the tracks or had deformed dramatically. It looks like we will be doing a bunch of track repairs in the upcoming weeks big time.
Here's a pair of photos taken of a couple of the trouble spots to feed your curiosity.