Life Lessons From The Clumsy People

[Davo Dentetsu]

A thread for those horror stories of all gauges where we are all united on one front:  we stuffed up big time.

My contribution:  If you happen to have an E259 N'EX set book in your hands, make sure you are holding it properly.  They tend not to like solid floors, they tend to make them go all... explodey.  :/

Luckily, not a total horror tale.  Took me a while to put back together, the only permanent damage was to a pantograph.  Already on order, so... yeah.  Lucky escape.

Anyone else have tales of such calamity and silliness?  Bad endings, good endings, all good.

[Densha]

I did once run a brand new train on very bad tracks. Then it derailed and took a 1m dive to the floor. I was lucky that only the buffers were broken, and I think a little damage to the body shell.

[JR 500系]

I am very lucky to yet to encounter such an incident, and I take extreme care when handling these babies.. I did however let a Tomytec engine unit for Tetsudo collection fail. Absolutely no damage, they're very hardy!

[E6系]

I once accidently left a superglue fingerprint on the window of a model I was repairing.  Frustrated, I put my hand up to my face and my finger stuck to my eyelid.  It was extremely difficult to remove.

[Bernard]

I tried installing a decoder on an early Tomix model train.....it had a spring as the worm to turn the gears. The only way I could see soldering the decoder motor wire was to get close to the brushes mount....well I got too close and it was enough to melt the brush mount....ruined a nice engine.

[1954G]

Ugh, I now have a reason to post in this thread.  

 

While I was running my 223 and 225 series commuter trains last night, I noticed some scuffs on the body of the 225 series.  I bent over my layout to take a closer look, at which point my glasses slid off my face and fell onto the roof of the 223 series.   :confused5:

 

 

I've contacted Model Train Plus to order replacement body shells for both trains. 

 

 

[cteno4]

1954g,

 

Ouch. I've nailed a few trains with my little cell phone in a breast pocket leaning over the layout, but luckily no perminant damage.

 

We have to watch out for our stinking club badges at shows on neck lanyards as they can take out trains when lean over the layout.

 

Perhaps try E6 super glue trick with the glasses... Or Velcro behind the ears?

 

Jeff

[keitaro]

i dropped my dd51 sakura once. 1.5m + drop it shattered into 50 parts.

 

somehow i got everything back together and it still runs fine. I did never find the spring for the middle trucks.

 

So i used a spare from a rapido coupler slot and it actually works better than the original less jumpy and derailing.

 

the train also has no visible damage or marks but the top roof comes off super easy now.

 

 

 

 

edit---

Ohh i forgot to mention the time i accidentally left my door open and the superglue on the table, as well as my yamaguchi retro set siting on the layout.

 

then My son being 3 years old at the time though it to be a great idea to use glue on the train to make it better and attach flock.

 

after soaking the train for a week i got it looking pretty good except 1 little part where the glue had gone white.

Edited November 5, 2014 by keitaro

[katoftw]

N scale stuff seems to be pretty robust.  I've dropped a few from table/bench height (90cm) and never really had a problem.  The fine pieces like rails etc always seems to fit back on without too much issues.

[ozman2009]

I once dropped my Marklin Z scale Br53 one metre onto a hard wooden floor. The top popped off the tender, but it went back on OK and the loco was otherwise undamaged and ran perfectly OK afterwards.

[Martijn Meerts]

Way back when we had an H0 layout up on the attic, I managed to fall down the attic stairs while trying to put a car on the tracks.. I ended up in the hospital with a serious concussion, but on the upside, the car wasn't damaged at all ;)

[railsquid]

N scale stuff seems to be pretty robust.  I've dropped a few from table/bench height (90cm) and never really had a problem.  The fine pieces like rails etc always seems to fit back on without too much issues.

 

Could you repeat and document this for scientific purposes? ;)

[lurkingknight]

not particularly train related, but I was changing battery connectors on my battery packs for my airsoft rifles and didn't think about it being a bad idea to be lazy and cut both wires at the same time.

 

yeah things got bright and hot.

 

 

Another battery pack story this time with a lithium polymer pack again for said rifles, but this time cutting only 1 wire at a time, but this time the balancer lead flopped around and touched my brand new wire stripper/clippers, the resulting arc melted a hole in the cutting edge of the clippers.

 

 

so moral of the story is to be careful around high discharge electricity... and even when you think you are being safe, look again. :P

 

 

More volts through the wall outlet, so be careful soldering electrics for trains :P

Edited November 7, 2014 by lurkingknight

[kvp]

 

More volts through the wall outlet, so be careful soldering electrics for trains

As someone who managed to get himself connected into a high amperage 16V AC circuit when i was around 10 (while i was fixing some accessory wiring), my advice would be to always disconnect the mains power before working on anything that uses electricity. Also always use a current limited power source with short circuit detection and since we are in modern times, try to use wall adapters in a short/overvoltage protected distribution strip with a lighted switch. This way it's easier to check if everything is powered down and since the wall adapters only output low voltage and preferably current limited electricity, it's harder to get electrocuted or produce too many sparks. Limiting available current to every consumer (or at least district) is also good way to avoid melted equipment on a larger layout.

 

ps: For the airsofts, it's a good idea to use quick release connectors for the battery packs. It also makes it easy to remove batteries before storage. The same idea is good for layouts with equipment that might need changing or servicing in the future. Soldering upside down while laying on our backs under the layout (and the tip of the soldering iron) is a bad idea.

[marknewton]

Last week I was unpacking some trains that I'd taken to the club, and I managed to drop one of my D51s. Fortunately it landed on carpet, but every add-on detail part came off the thing, plus it suffered a bit of damage to one of the smoke deflectors. After what seemed an eternity of grubbing around on the floor with my nose in the carpet, I found all the bits except for two handrail stanchions.

 

To my surprise it didn't suffer any mechanical damage, so it still runs okay, but it needed a fair bit of work to put it all back together. I repaired the smoke deflector, but I might replace both sides with a scratchbuilt pair of a different design, just for a bit of variety.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[Kamome]

Taking a brand new Kato C56 out of the box and removing the grey retaining mount, it slipped and plummeted less than 10cm straight on to one of the side ladders. Not a good day!!

 

 After numerous attempts at trying to glue something so small with oversized, cumbersome fingers, I eventually gave up and had to order a pack of 10x the part from Kato. At least now I can drop it another 8 times, as long as I get the angle right.

Edited November 10, 2014 by Kamome

[lurkingknight]

 

 

ps: For the airsofts, it's a good idea to use quick release connectors for the battery packs. It also makes it easy to remove batteries before storage. The same idea is good for layouts with equipment that might need changing or servicing in the future. Soldering upside down while laying on our backs under the layout (and the tip of the soldering iron) is a bad idea.

 

the melting occurred when upgrading molex connectors to better grade t connectors. :P

 

Just means I had to add a number of safety precaution steps while dealing with battery packs especially.

[Sascha]

A thread for those horror stories of all gauges where we are all united on one front:  we stuffed up big time.

 

My contribution:  If you happen to have an E259 N'EX set book in your hands, make sure you are holding it properly.  They tend not to like solid floors, they tend to make them go all... explodey.  :/

 

Luckily, not a total horror tale.  Took me a while to put back together, the only permanent damage was to a pantograph.  Already on order, so... yeah.  Lucky escape.

 

Anyone else have tales of such calamity and silliness?  Bad endings, good endings, all good.

Thats what happened with mine. Had to get a new coupler.Maybe the Book is cursed  :)

Edited November 10, 2014 by Sascha

[HantuBlauLOL]

That happens in most tomix boxes..

[railsquid]

I have to admit, I do prefer the Kato cases.

 

Mind you both are better than the so-called "book set" my (British) Dapol 4-car HST came in, which is actually a cardboard box with a foam inlay. "Luckily" British manufacturers like to make the foam insert nice and tight so if the insert falls out, the stock might not go flying, on the other hand it's so tight you worry about damaging the stock every time you get it out or put it back in.

[kvp]

Actually the modern european jewel cases are rather good for keeping the cars safe. First you have the paper box for the whole set, then the jewel cases inside, then in those two part plastic inlays shaped around the cars, then the clear plastic wrappers. They are good for keeping the cars safe but takes around 2-4 minutes to unpack a single car in repackable way. Now when you have a trainset with 8 cars, it will take 16-32 minutes to unpack them one by one and about the same amount to pack them away and a desk is required, so not really doable while standing beside a layout during an exhibition.

 

Japanese bookcases are good for quickly setting up a train and then packing it away. I prefer the ones where there is a foam layer on the bottom and on top too, so the cars are cushioned on both sides. Sadly i had a few trains that got disassembled during ems shipping in bookcases, but that was mostly due to a lack of cuhioning around the bookcases in the packages.

[katoftw]

Actually the modern european jewel cases are rather good for keeping the cars safe. First you have the paper box for the whole set, then the jewel cases inside, then in those two part plastic inlays shaped around the cars, then the clear plastic wrappers. They are good for keeping the cars safe but takes around 2-4 minutes to unpack a single car in repackable way. Now when you have a trainset with 8 cars, it will take 16-32 minutes to unpack them one by one and about the same amount to pack them away and a desk is required, so not really doable while standing beside a layout during an exhibition.

 

Japanese bookcases are good for quickly setting up a train and then packing it away. I prefer the ones where there is a foam layer on the bottom and on top too, so the cars are cushioned on both sides. Sadly i had a few trains that got disassembled during ems shipping in bookcases, but that was mostly due to a lack of cuhioning around the bookcases in the packages.

All my Micro Ace stuff is the individual jewel cases.  So true on the unpacking and repacking scenerio.  Although I have had to rebuild a MA train cos mr postman was rough with the package.

[E6系]

Oh.  I know about that.  Of the models I buy each year, one or two MA models have parts off.

[railsquid]

Actually the modern european jewel cases are rather good for keeping the cars safe. First you have the paper box for the whole set, then the jewel cases inside, then in those two part plastic inlays shaped around the cars, then the clear plastic wrappers. They are good for keeping the cars safe but takes around 2-4 minutes to unpack a single car in repackable way. Now when you have a trainset with 8 cars, it will take 16-32 minutes to unpack them one by one and about the same amount to pack them away and a desk is required, so not really doable while standing beside a layout during an exhibition.

 

Japanese bookcases are good for quickly setting up a train and then packing it away. I prefer the ones where there is a foam layer on the bottom and on top too, so the cars are cushioned on both sides. Sadly i had a few trains that got disassembled during ems shipping in bookcases, but that was mostly due to a lack of cuhioning around the bookcases in the packages.

 

Actually I must tone down my earlier slight rant, having just packed a bunch of stuff away, it's specifically Dapol packaging with the ridiculously stiff foam inlays. They print a little label telling you to take the foam inlay out before removing the item; with the HST "bookcase" this is fine (but it's easy for the whole thing to fall out); with the class 58 loco the foam inlay is so tight in the jewel case it's almost impossible to remove, and the locomotive is packed tightly inside that, making it very tempting to lever the locomotive out using a buffer. On the plus side it did survive a trip in the post from the UK in a poorly padded parcel. In both cases the foam is really tight and needs extreme caution when handling.

 

Also the new Bachmann/Farish class 55 has a wierd plastic inlay which clamps around the locomotive; so inserting it/removing it will cause the loco to come into contact with fairly stiff plastic edges.

 

As for the cardboard sleeves (these seem a British phenomenon), they're kind of nice but I suspect they'll become looser with age; this is happening with the 2nd hand loco I bought, where the jewel case will slip out of the sleeve very easily.

 

Anyway #firstworldproblems and all that... I'll get myself some empty Kato cases whatever for the problem stuff.

 

Oh, and I had a fun time replacing a Fleischmann coach with prominent but tiny roof ventilators which fly off easily, especially if you try and place it in the box the wrong way round (my fault). I found the one which went missing, eventually.

Edited November 11, 2014 by railsquid

[kvp]

 

As for the cardboard sleeves (these seem a British phenomenon),

Maerklin used them a lot from the 70-ies to the early 90-ies, especially with full train slide out trays. Some of them had clear plastic tops, so you could see the trains in their molded plastic trays. They also had the coach vent problem, but it went away once the cutouts were made in a way to fit the cars in both ways. The trickiest part is to close the sleeve in a way that keeps the extra plastic sheet centered over the tray, so the cars have something soft between them and the sleeve wall.