Have you ever had a moment where you’ve found something unexpected in your toolbox, on the workbench or on the layout which shouldn’t really be there and wondered what it was doing there?
I was running my N scale Shay on the club layout recently, with a few of the other members watching - it was the first time they’d had a chance to see one in action. One of the other members - the one who’d introduced me to the club, actually - reached out and carefully unwound a long copper-red hair from around the loco. It belonged to my partner - she’s got long, wavy, copper-red hair - but I was puzzled as to how it had gotten on the model - she hadn’t been within a couple of feet of it since I’d got it. Same thing happened with a pair of wire cutters that were in my toolbox in the layout room at a previous house - she hadn’t been within 5 or 6 feet of them.
In the past I have gone in to run a train for a few minutes only to find trains going where they shouldn’t be going. We have a lot of people come through our house sometimes. It seems visitors have been going in to check on my layout progress when I am not home and decide to flip a few levers while just looking. I now check them all before leaving the station.[:)]
I was working at the workbench recently and I moved some stuff and startled the heck out of myself-- sitting there, right in front of me, was an actual clear section of workbench. Talk about unexpected finds… I could see all the way down to the wood!
All the time. I am in the process of moving from our house of 30+ years to our retirement house. I have “found” all manner of goodies when packing up the workbench (I use an old desk). Not to mention all the goodies squirreled away in bureaus, file cabinets, etc.
I found a LaBelle boxcar kit - at least I thought it was a kit until I opened the box and found I had built, painted, and lettered the car. I remember buying LaBelle kits 35+ years ago, but thought I had only built the flatcar.
Time to call HO CSI they solve any mystery in less then an hour, maybe they can also find my missing bright boy. Bought a brand new one last year used it once and gone!
There is a hyperdimensional hypercube in that workshop of yours----I have one in my home offfice[:-^]
I found one of my RS2’s in the bottom of my wife’s weaving supplies drawer one night. Discovered that ‘Spring’ took to sneaking off with them while I wasn’t home
Audrey and I now have to watch our stuff a little more vigilently I guess[:-^]
I had a similar experience this year when I cleared my way down to the workdesk (using a shovel and a machete) and discovered a simulated woodgrain finish. But by the time I had fetched my camera and returned to snap a picture of it, the modeling junk undergrowth had reclaimed it.
Two months ago I was looking for a engine shell I had put up. Look in a box I thought I had it in, not there. But there was a $20.00 bill! That will work for me!
I all so found NYC box car I forgot I owned in my engine house.
Then another day I found a MRC Tech III transformer on a shelf. When did I buy that?
Yes, I know what you mean. I tried tried to tell my wife about it but she told me I was hallucinating and tried to pour me a cup of hot cocoa (actually, that would be where I’m really hallucinating… [(-D] )
When I rebuilt the train room and workshop I found a tombstone that the previous owners left behind when they moved away. It used to be on the grave of the woman who owned the house before me father.
Weirdest phone call in my life when I called up my daughters school where the grand child works and asked her if she wanted their tombstone back.
Last Thanksgiving, my family was at my mother-in-law’s house. My wife asked me to go down into the crawl space and find one of her childhood toys for our youngest daughter. While I was down there, I stumbled upon these:
I had stored these in Grandma’s crawl space when I was cleaning up my previous house to sell it. After we moved, I just bought new locos and modeled CSX. Finding these has made me want to go back to modeling early-1970’s B&O.
They took it, to bad I didn’t think about the potential rocks in it. Well, guess the next time I find a tombstone in the house I’ll know what to do with it.
I think it was last fall - went into the train room in the early morning to get something out of another part of the basement. Up in the “sky” near the ceiling over the engine service area was a dark spot. I’m thinking “Did we have a leak last night when it rained?” Got a bit closer and IT MOVED!!!. After I got back in my skin, my first thought was we had a bat in the house but a closer look showed it was a frog! (A Michigan Gray Tree Frog according to Mr. Internet.) I got a large bucket and poked him till he came off the wall and fell in the bucket. Two surprises - a frog in the basement and said frog climbed the bloomin’ wall.
The previous day I had been using the shop vac out in the garage, then carrried it around to the outside door to the lower level rec room, where I promptly forgot about it until after dark. I think Mr. Frog hopped into the hose and got carried into the train room, and spent the night trying to figure out where he was. Good thing he didn’t hide in the roundhouse!
