What If You Put A Penny On Railroad Tracks?

[Chet]

You would get this. It used to be a "thing" to do it and I found the result in a junk drawer today. A good penny is included for comparison.

 

[OneEyedDiva]

But why? I'm surprised it's not more dented. I never heard of this before and when I was young I lived near RR tracks and some of the children played near them.

 

[Alligatorob]

LOL, did that many times as a kid, even a nickel now and then, when I felt rich!

The train track that used to run new my house has been converted to a rails to trails thing, doubt a bicycle would do the job...

 

[Aunt Bea]

When I was a kid we were warned not to do that for fear we would derail the train!

Remember elongated pennies made by machines at tourist attractions, fairs, and carnivals.

Imagine spending a quarter to ruin a penny.

 

[Chet]

But why? I'm surprised it's not more dented. I never heard of this before and when I was young I lived near RR tracks and some of the children played near them.

It was what boys did and not well behaved girls.

 

[OneEyedDiva]

When I was a kid we were warned not to do that for fear we would derail the train!

Remember elongated pennies made by machines at tourist attractions, fairs, and carnivals.

Imagine spending a quarter to ruin a penny.

Gee...I never saw those either. Well did they make more than a quarter on the sales of these coins?

 

[hollydolly]

We never did it either because we were always told the same about derailing the train if we did....

 

[Georgiagranny]

Wut wo. I guess I was a not-very-well-behaved girl. We did this often.

 

[jujube]

Yup, guilty here. I lived next to the tracks and we put pennies on there frequently, or bottlecaps.

 

[old medic]

When I was a kid we were warned not to do that for fear we would derail the train!

Remember elongated pennies made by machines at tourist attractions, fairs, and carnivals.

Imagine spending a quarter to ruin a penny.

Now its 2 Quarters... We have about a $10 collection of them now Our Grandson can't pass one of those machines..
done many a penny on the tracks too.

 

[Chris P Bacon]

Wut wo. I guess I was a not-very-well-behaved girl. We did this often.

I like a woman what has a lil' spunkiness to her!

 

[Tommy]

I suspect the result was more dramatic with US pennies made prior to 1982. Since 1982, they've all been made of copper coated zinc.

At this point I'm not about to do a comparison though. To begin with, I'd have to find a train and I haven't seen one in many years.

 

[RadishRose]

I never did this. My son however, informed me just a few years ago that he and his friends used to. I was shocked! He laughed at me.....

 

[Meanderer]

Chris Uhlik
former Engineering Director (retired) at Google (2002-2017)

"A freight line runs past my house in Vancouver Washington. Trains pass about 30 times per day. So, I reached into my pocket and found 3 pennies. 3¢ for science! Let’s do an empirical test. I taped the pennies down with duct tape in hopes of recovering maybe one of them. But I got lucky. Two of the three were still there after about 100 empty box cars and 3 engines passed over them at about 40 mph."

"The pennies became penny foil. They are now about 0.020″ thick. Not really paper thin, more like the thickness of 4 sheets of paper."

 

[fuzzybuddy]

Oh, yeah. I did that rail thing as a kid. Got a squished penny. I don't know what you call them, but at all the old amusement parks, you would put a penny in this metal press and turn a handle, and out popped a penny all reshaped with other writing on it. I wasn't really sure if they kept the penny and what came out was metal blank.

 

[RFW]

I was a good little boy who wouldn't dare cause a train derailment.

 

[Liberty]

It is considered good luck to put a penny on the rail of a train, especially a train you know. Like the train carrying President George Bush's funeral train ran right by our Town, many put pennies on the track:

 

[Lara]

When I was a freshman in college, the college newspaper interviewed me. They asked me what my favorite past time was. I said "smashing pennies on the railroad track". Talk about cringeworthy.

Why didn't I say something smart, something college worthy, or admirable like "volunteering for muscular dystrophy and tutoring inner city kids to read" which I did enjoy. I think I was trying to sound cute...NOT. At least there were no train derailments

 

[Pinky]

My sisters and I did that in the 50's. Wish I'd kept one of the pennies. We had a railway line close to our house. The trains stopped to off-load sugar beets. No derailments!

 

[Aunt Bea]

Chris Uhlik
former Engineering Director (retired) at Google (2002-2017)

"A freight line runs past my house in Vancouver Washington. Trains pass about 30 times per day. So, I reached into my pocket and found 3 pennies. 3¢ for science! Let’s do an empirical test. I taped the pennies down with duct tape in hopes of recovering maybe one of them. But I got lucky. Two of the three were still there after about 100 empty box cars and 3 engines passed over them at about 40 mph."

"The pennies became penny foil. They are now about 0.020″ thick. Not really paper thin, more like the thickness of 4 sheets of paper."

Thanks, now another question.

"When someone asks you, A penny for your thoughts, and you put your two cents in, what happens to the other penny?"
- George Carlin

 

[JaniceM]

I never lived near railroad tracks, but when I was a little kid I said it'd be neat to drill a hole through a penny to make a necklace. I was told it's against the law to deface government property, and money was in that category.

I always liked the flattened pennies from amusement parks, etc., and I think I might still have one or two.

 

[Paco Dennis]

"A penny saved is a penny earned."

 

[timoc]

In some countries their coins have holes in them, I used to have a big tin of such coins, I used some of them as washers.

 

[Rich29]

I remember putting pennies on the track (Reading RR in NJ) with my friend and then we would hide
in the bushes. Sometimes we weren't able to find them after the train passed.

 

[Gemma]

Yes, I did the same thing. A bunch of us kids would pick wild strawberries along the tracks and place the pennies on the rails.