Can a Train really flatten a 50c coin?

[zilo]

Just remembered...

you can go to the australian mint in canberra and flatten as many as you like...legally... on their machine there...

[cedric]

one of my old fishing spots was a sugar cane train bridge and a couple of times we had line run over and 10lb line that is maybe .5 mm ended up about 10mm wide but still fairly strong.

[Marquis]

I still have my flat 2c in the draw. Used to do it heaps. Rolls of cap gun caps are fun aswell

[pottery beige]

shopping trolleys ftw..

[Olbucko]

The main wheels on a large 200 ton steam locomotive would exert a pressure of about 20 tons on the coin, if the coin had an area of one square inch, thats about 45,000 psi. Even more if it was going at any speed

[Franco Cozzo]

Anyone tried in a workshop standard 6 tonne press?

[capesy]

anyone willing to post pictures up of the coins after the train has ran them over?

[Riksta]

I've got one of the local train stations out front of my place, one Christmas Day a couple of years back my cousins and I put a bunch of silver up there directly after a train had been (so we knew we had an hour before the next one!) and went coin hunting after the next one went.

Most of them did get flattened, you can still sort of see the pattern on them and the denomination (its weird) but they'd be really thin instead of normal thickness, and no longer round.

As for the comment about vibrating off, we did find a few coins laying round that had come off without a flattening, but most of them did get flattened. Obviously, you have to hunt as even after they're flattened they don't stay on the rail.

[Marquis]

I will try and get a good pic a bit later of a flat 1c. It is almost the size of my thumb to the first knuckle. It is about 1mm thick on one side and a hair width on the other. Even though it is flat I can still see a 1 and the possum on it. The other side is shiny smooth. No idea where the 2c is

[MAD]

Shotgun shell primers were fun... so I've heard...

[Marquis]

Bit of a mission by phone but hopefully ok. Hard to get pic at night. Next to a non squished one





Can see the possum pretty clear but hard to photograph

[malazn mafia]

Originally Posted by Ugg

when i was a kid we used to take 2c coins and place them on the track.
train would flatten them to perfect 10c size.
we would then go to laundromat, put in machine and get two 5c for it.

after a while we had enough for a day at luna park...(7c a ride)


our house backed onto railway tracks in suburban melb so we could do it all day....

haha that is genius. Kind of like the stack of malaysia 50sen (50 cent = 15c AU) coin I bring back every year and load up council parking meters and vending machines with.

[Ben73]

Originally Posted by 2011G6E

so it only has the 120 to 130 tonnes of locomotive squashing it.

Only a 130 tonnes? Weak. The ones here are about 180 tonnes lol.

No way a tiny coin would derail a train. I have hit big bits of ballast many times and have yet to derail.
When your not expecting it, it makes you jump as the entire cab vibrates violently and you loose some effort, but it makes you pay closer attention.

The other week we came across an interesting one. On the track there were 30 bits of ballast, 2 metal poles, fish plate, bottle of vodka and a bike. Some kids had too much spare time. Lucky we stopped 10 metres before it.
It was coming down the hill into Singleton, typical.

[Madaya]

A mate of mine has a couple of quarters flattened by this....

The NASA Crawler Transporter has a combined Transporter - Space Shuttle mass of about 5000 tonnes. The tracks though, spread that weight over a substantial area.