Anyone else have Gremlins playing with their layout?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I swear it’s got to be the only logical explanation…lol I am in the building stages of the nex layout but have one completed yard and engine servicing facility section basically completed except for detail work and some scenery. So I was just in the mood to play with trains tonight instead of working on or building something so I go over to the completed area and fire up the command station and attempt to make a few moves with an RS3. Dead in the water nothing Nada zip. So I was like WTH is going on here?.I figure ok lets move that K4 out from under the coaling tower and put it in an open stall of the round house. Yeah in a pigs ear. Moves a half inch and dies. same with a 2-10-2 helper locomotive and so on so forth. I pull a Y3 out of the round house stall make it on to the turntable bridge without a hitch Yeah! attempt to drive it off the bridge as soon as I hit the rails of the lead in track short circuit! I am now ready to invent new cuss words or smash something with my fist. This is a section of the layout that was reused from the old layout and every last turnout, length track, etc.has been working for more then two years without a hitch until now. I am sure it may be a simple solution but I’m still not sold that it ain’t the Gremils messing with me.

Anyone else ever have any unexplained stuff go wrong with their layout? I’m gonna go check nder the bench work for those pesky little critters.

2

I have been fighting them for years. They seem to be more active when I have a guest[:)] With a layout under construntion it is easy to get a screw, bit of wire, nail or tool some place where it can cause problems. I have had this happen many times over the years, I never seem to learn.

3

Only one. Murphy.

Yes, I am bored also.

Rich

4

Don’t even get me started on my haunted flat car. It spins its couplers every time I walk in the room.

A Stephen King special. [:O]

Brent

5

All kidding aside, my experience has been that oxidation and mechanical electrical connections are frequent trouble spots after they have been idle. Good quality soldered connections are more reliable than things like suitcase connectors, because of oxidation issues.

Also, there’s nothing to cause trouble like dirty track and dirty wheels. Before I venture into operation, I do the bright boy routine on the track and clean the locomotive wheels, then I run my track cleaning car over the layout to remove the bright boy residue. By then the loco wheels are dirty again, so they get another cleaning. Then I can enjoy operation without any trouble. All in all, it takes about half an hour to do the pre-operation maintenance. It’s a ritual against the gremlins.

6

Boy do I have gremlins. I was doing the same exact thing you were, I am building my new layout, but decided to run some trains tonight.

A (PECO) switch that has been installed and working perfectly for a few months, now decides to break, well… break my cars, all of the sudden it was derailing cars and locos. Now I have to rip out the switch and replace it, I can’t for the life of me figure out what happened.

Drives me crazy!!

7

Can someone please explain to me, why, whenever I intended to show my layout to someone visiting us, my DCC system needed a full reset, before I could run a train?

This happens only when visitors are around.

8

I have gleamed my rails, so I don’t have much trouble with oxidation, but I still wipe the track down with a rag moistened with denatured alcohol before running trains any time the layout has been idle for more than a few days (every time I run them, these days [V] ).

Even so, unexplained issues - cars that suddenly won’t stay coupled, formerly trouble-free turnouts suddenly derailing everything that touches them, etc.). Some of it is probably due to expansion and contraction of the layout. But really, it does seem like it ALWAYS happens when I’m trying to show off my layout!

9

I think William Shatner was riding in my Bowser PCC car the other day. This is a solid, reliable little trolley, and it was looping around in the subway tunnels while I was moving some trains on and off the new track on another part of the layout. If you remember the old Twilight Zone, pre Star Trek, our hero looked out the window of the old propeller airliner he was riding and saw a creature on the wing, playing with the engine.

Yeah, same creature. Next thing I knew, the trailing truck of the trolley was off the track, in a spot where there is never a problem. I picked up the trolley and found I was down to 7 wheels. OK, it’s a press fit of the brass half-axle into a plastic center axle, and that could come off, but, well, where’s the wheel? I’ve been searching for it for days now. I’ve pulled all the lift-off sections that let me access the subways. I’ve run the train-cam slowly through the tunnels, but I can’t find that wheel.

It has entered a place whose boundaries are that of imagination…

10

I am glad the Gremlins are visiting your layout now, I hosted them a month or so ago! Seemed like nothing would make it around the layout. Plus the nasty little sucker did all there evil in the hardest spots to reach!

Had cars that never derail, derail on straight section inside a 13 foot tunnel. My Y6 b that never derails, started picking a # 6 turnout? Blue Line RSD 15 motor decoder stopped working? (reset and it was fine)

The oddest one is my Hudson Train got longer? I don’t switch around cars that much. My Hudson had been sitting on the same passing spur for some time. After running it, I parked back on the same spur, it was now fouling the main? Had to pull a car so it would clear the turnouts. I swear I did not add any rolling stock!

Cuda Ken

11

I had one turnout on a ladder track that was visited by Mr Murphy awhile back. It was wanting to do an entire reportoire of things —turn switch on–just sat there----then when one thinks that it’d be cancelled out—suddenly would flip to other track. Or you’d switch and get—the opposite of what you wanted. Of course Mr. Murphy also visited a wye on the Exceda yard as well.

BTW–that troublesome switch? Is now an EX-Switch[:-,][}:)][:D]

Mr Murphy is not welcome here—[|(]

12

Gremins??? Oh yeah…

But what the gremlins really do to me is to constantly move tools. Last week I was sweeping the floor and set the dust pan down to continue sweeping. I went to gather up another pile - couldn’t find the dustpan and spent the next 45 minutes looking for it - I looked all over the basement, the kitchen, bathroom, garage and finally decided the gremlins had just absconded with it. Later in the day I found it setting on an L-girder - now I would NEVER have left it there…[(-D]

13

Grmelnis? What are Grmelnis?

14

Smaller Gerlimns—

15

We have a resident gremlin who lives somewhere on my club’s layout and shows up on a regular basis. Usually it just loosens screws on coupler boxes and trucks but recently it has been loosening connectors on tortoise motors causing shorts in our turnout power supply. We’ve never seen it but I know it hides in the tunnels when members are operating because it loves to derail engines and knock them on the floor.

16

My gremlins go cow tipping…except I have no cow field so they tip over boxcars. I know it’s the gremlins because there’s no way our cats would do that! [:-^]

17

ohhhh never thought to blame my cat for the unexplained derailments or messed up ballast or broken wires…lol thanks

maybe i should teach him to catch Gremlins and forget about Mice…lol

18

Oh, yes. In fact, the gremblins are still there!

I don’t have a perminant layout set up (canstruction pending an agreement with my parents giving me 1/2 of the garage) so I have been using a 1-foot x 6-foot piece of wood with the track nailed right to the wood. It don’t look pretty, but it gets the job done.

Well, I threw it up in an afternoon, and had intended to use it to “try on” an industry, aka a scrapyard (complete with locomotives being (turn away if you are weak-hearted)scrapped, as well as a huge auto-salvage set-up) and I picked out the locomotive, a Model Power GP 20. I weathered the loco heavily (like every thing else in a scrapyard) and placed it on the tracks. It went well, untill I hit the lead switch. The locomotive went dead. No rhyme or reason, it went kaput. I tried with other locomotives I had, and the same thing, that one switch stalled all three. The track was clean, and the Tech II power pack( although about 30 years old) works like a charm.
I still have no clue what is going on. All other switches work perfictly.

Well, another head-scratcher for my friend and I.

19

They come around my garage during the Spring. They hide under the benchwork while it’s raining, and when the sun comes out, they crawl out and invade my track and turnouts. I’ve sneaked out during the night and suddenly turned the lights on and you can hear them going, "Oh CRAP! " and scurrying back to where they came from.

I have threatened them with an Exorcism. I can legitimately do this,some of my close buddies are Priests, and they’ve VOLUNTEERED!

However, the little beasties have crawled onto one of my flatcars and always derail it on the cliffside of Yuba Pass. Luckily, it derails into the INSIDE of the curve, and not to the outside, which is a 6-foot drop to the cement garage floor. And it’s just that one flat-car. Do you suppose it’s because it’s lettered for PENNSYLVANIA and these are West Coast Gremlins? [%-)]

And this Sp;ring, they have infected all of the Sinohara turnouts that lead to my engine facilities. I have locomotives that cannot get from out of the coaling tower or the sanding track without a tap or a push or a whack to the track itself. And if I replace the turnouts with Peco’s, I will have to tear out and relay all of the track in the facility because of the difference in turnout length. And I know it’s the Gremlins, because I can hear them chuckling in the background every time I need to change out motive power.

Ah, yes. It’s time to call Father Bonifiglio, Father Wanser and Father Garibaldi. Two Jesuits and a Franciscan. If THEY can’t get those Gremlins traveling down the block to the bus-stop, luggage in hand, muttering about where the next garage model railroad is in town, NOBODY can, LOL!

GOD WILL PREVAIL! GREMLINS–DISPERSE!! [soapbox]

Tom [:D]

20

I have a one more instance where the gremblens have messed with me on my old layout (the one before the 1x6 quickie). Well, here it goes:

EMD smokes like a Real ALCO Well, I had spent $110.00 on a Bachmenn starter DCC set (you know, those EZ-DCC systems) and, as the over-eager 14-year-old train buff I was at the time, I couldn’t wait to get home and set it up on my layout. Well, the gremblens attacked. I had an EMD GP 38-2 on a siding, doing nothing while I was watching the instruction DVD on how to set it up. I set it up, with no problem, and decided to see how the system would work. I coupled a GP-40-2 (that came with the kit) to that GP-38-2 to see if I could syncronize the speeds (and mabe use the GP 38-2 as a "dynamic brake"unit) Well, it went good for about 10 minites or so, then the GP 38-2 started to give off smoke. Well, I had no clue what was going on to the unit, and I immediately picked it up off the rails, leaving the GP 40-2 to continue down the tracks. That Geep 38 (as I called it) felt extremely hot, and, of course, I panicked, as it was one of the most expensive locomotives in my fleet (not to mention that it was one of my favorites) so I went to the water-faucet and hit the locomotive with a flash-flood of water, forgetting that it was an electric appliance and was not suppose to get wet.

Well, happy that the locomotive was saved, I returned back to the layout. the following was something like this:

Hey,what happened to that train?[?]

Waht about that locomotive!?[?]

Wasn’t that switch thrown to loop around the mainline!?!?[?]

What happened to that emergency bumper at the end of the cliff (layout)!?!?!?!?[?]

Well, at this time, panic mode kicked on.

I fimally put 2 and 2 together, and, at the bottom of the cliff