THE CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING COIN!

NEIL WRITES... If you put a coin on the track of a small commuter train, what will happen to it? I ask this because when certain persons have done this very act nothing is left but a dark smear and a faint image (not indentation) of the coin in the polished steel of the track. It appears that it is effectively vanishes, but surely a small commuter train isn't sufficient to do that, is it?


Yes, it is!




















I’m sorry, I just couldn’t resist. Actually putting a coin on the track, especially a commuter train, is a very dangerous practice. If the train hits the coin at the right angle and speed, the coin can actually de-rail the train. Such was the case in September of 1984 in Birmingham, England. The eastbound train to Liverpool had just reached it’s cruising speed of 63 miles per hour. It is suspected that young children from a nearby schoolyard had put a shilling on the track to see what would happen. When the train hit the coin, the second car jumped the track dragging the rest of the train with it. Thirteen people and three sheep were killed and no one ever found out who put that shilling on the track. The only trace of the coin was a dark smear and a faint image (not indentation) of the coin in the polished steel of the track.....












Okay, okay, I’m sorry. It must be the coffee talking. The real answer is the coin gets thrown off the track. You have to do some searching to find it, but it is there. I’ve never put a coin on the track of a commuter train before, but when my larvae were young, we would put coins on the track of regular trains and they would get flattened and thrown a few feet from where we put them on the track. Sometimes it would take a while to find them and occasionally we would lose one, but most of the time they showed up.