Subsequent use of the Doom Gate?

[Subversive]

Say what?  How?  With what?  To what effect?  I'm not seeing any details on this or specific suggestions elsewhere, other than suggestion of an additional "one-time use."  I see the spell details at the end of The Doom Train scenario, but characters wouldn't learn it from observing the casual use of it.  Is it meant that they take the train set (or even the offal set) with them?  Or some other component? 

Has anyone done this?  Or do you have any suggestions?

[morganhua]

In my game, Alexis teaches the PCs (who were willing) to keep the "organ" train running, so they can return home.  Two PCs learned how to "open" a pocket universe, but for future use, they must fashion or have a train set with them.  The two PCs who learned the spell lost San as they played choo-choo with the bloody organs for 1d50 rounds.  I didn't tell them the San loss was for casting the spell, they thought it was for playing choo-choo with the bloody organs.  :-)

But the two PCs have never used the spell since.

[Subversive]

Thanks.

Hmmm...  I noted that the book implied that handkerchief on the back was important, perhaps moreso than the train cars. And from the inside a human heart seemed to do as well as the train car.  Perhaps the symbols on the train car were only needed to establish the connection to the original gate.  After some consideration, I am leaning towards the doom gate still existing, even without the real train being present, the remaining pocket universe being relatively gray and empty and also where time passes more slowly, and that a relatively fresh human heart, moved in a non-flat, figure-eight pattern relative to that handkerchief, would allow entry and exit from there.  The handkerchief is far more portable than the "heavy" train set (or the offal set) but a heart might be hard to come by.  Or I don't know, then again, maybe the train car makes more sense than the heart and perhaps the heart on the inside only worked because it had been specially prepared prior to the investigators arriving.

I think I just have to make sure that the random number of cycles makes it very difficult to be used as a trap, so that it is more of a temporary escape route of sorts, and also possibly conspire to make players lose access to it, should they manage to use it again.