Luckily it landed in earth and it just got extremely dirty. I quickly managed to stop the wheels from churning around in the sandy soil and when cool, stripped it down and washed off all the earth paying particular attention to the bearings and moving parts. I was extremely lucky that no particles of sand had damaged the "o" ring on the piston rod gland.
That happened once to my other Mamod, after it had started to rain. I got the loco into shelter as fast as I could The loco had been standing on a siding where the ballast was mostly sand. The raindrops must have splashed sand onto the piston rod. I failed to think of, or, notice this, so when the shower stopped, I steamed up the loco, after a couple of turns of the wheels, steam poured out of the backends of both cylinders, and the loco could no longer move itself, which was very inconvenient as a local TV station was filming my friends railway and my loco was the next due to be filmed
![:cry:](./images/smilies/icon_cry.gif)
Both "o" rings were ruined and had to be replaced !