One thing that Peter and I did on his last visit was cut the rails at either end of the bridge, so that it could be lifted off:

This is so that the bridge can removed, in case I get fed up crouching down to get under it all the time. Here you can see it removed, just to prove it works.

My assumption had always been that the cut rails were very well aligned, and therefore didn’t need any fishplates connecting them. Previous running seemed to confirm this.

But recently a family was visiting us, and their son in particular is very keen on G-gauge railways. So we were running a passenger train and a good train. As the goods train came through the hatch from the garden and round the curve onto the bridge …. DISASTER! It derailed, and shot over the edge of the baseboard!

Fortunately it had a soft landing, ending up in a box of old toys which had not yet been disposed of (this photo is a reconstruction – in reality there were four trucks also involved, fortunately still on the track/baseboard).

The front bogie, which includes the radio control unit, detached completely. However Playmobil is well designed and engineered, and once a cable had been reconnected and the bogie reinserted into the chassis, everything was working again.

But it was a wake-up call. I definitely need to fit fishplates to the cut tracks. I will use ones like these, which can be slid into place from the side:

And the plans for some decorative but functional edges to the bridge, which I thought were not really necessary, now look rather more important.