The good news is that I no longer have to worry about having to pay someone to upgrade the sound in my Athearn Challenger ( sound issues well documented elsewhere).
The bad news is the reason for that is a visiting cat knocked said Challenger off the layout onto the concrete floor. Damage not assessed yet, the layout is at my son-in-law’s, but I’m hearing words like rods and wheels broken and/or off.
After my busy time (in May) I’ll go over to see if anything is salvageable.
Such is life, at least no animals were harmed in the making of this story.
… everybody else is hearing a slightly different set of words…
… Bury the Cat…
JBCA,
That is terrible news. I hope you can forgive me for injecting some humor into your narrative, but the story itself is awful. I’m really sorry to hear it. Will your homeowner’s insurance cover it?
I don’t know if this is a good suggestion or not-- and won’t solve this situation either way-- but could you add a hand-railing around the perimeter of your layout and then attach some netting or something underneath that so it wouldn’t be too noticeable and yet would be there to catch something like this if it ever happened again?
Here’s hoping you discover the damager to be either mostly cosmetic or else easily repairable!
My fiancee is a cat lover so their appears to be cats in my future. The good news is she wants to play with my trains so it would be nice to have a spouse that participates with me in the hobby rather than sits back an critcizes. There will have to be rules regarding the cats because it is unacceptable to have cats knocking expensive trains to the floor!
I like cats and look forward to having them as pets - but I will be adamant about them not endangering expensive trains.
Thanks for the condolences. The ironic thing is that almost all the locomotives and rolling stock were in the yard, at the back of the layout so the worst that could happen is they would be tipped over. The Challenger, on the other hand, was on the programming track which is near the edge. A lesson learned.
I do see the humour in it all. My suggestion was a trip to the local (insert name of your favourite ethnic restaurant) to see what we could get for the cat!
I crashed my Athearn Dash 9 about 4 1/2 feet to the garage floor ( a nice 380 scale feet) and I thought it was toast… But the damage was no not bad and now it runs a lot better.
Another typical reason why I don’t own cats and carpet my train room …You guys are just too forgiving!.. That cat would have been a moving target for a quick 0.22 rifle practice session by now if it was my challenger…chuck
Please forgive them, for they know not what they do.
ALthough we have trained our cats not to get on top of anything, they still will forget and do it.
That is a god reason to put a clear acrylic plexiglass collar all the way around the layout. 1}it is see through; 2} it will keep rolling stock form gliding off to the floor for WHATEVER reason and 3} may discourage the cats from jumping up there anyway.
Wouldn’t go the Homeowners Ins. rout. Most of them have a $500 deductible & they will raise your rate enough that you could buy another engine each year. jerry
One thing I can tell you right now is that cats are quite a nusence.
Don’t get me wrong; I love my 3 (completely psychotic) cats, but I had to draw the line when I was in the 1st grade, when we found out that I had asthma. That day, the cats were relocated to the outside (except on stormy or cold days, they get the garage when that happens, or when they play “Dodge” with the closing door) Unfortunately… the plans for the garage are as follows: clean it out (yeah right), build a semi-perminant wall, thus dividing the garage in half, steam-clean that side of the garage (the cats are, as mentioned, psychotic,and never learned to use the litterbox) and then my parents will give me that half of the garage for my trains (can anyone help by giving me a trackplan based on my ideas for a freelanced version of Jacksonville, FL? =-)
So the moral of this story is… if you have indoor cats, lock the train room and go to the doctor to see if you have a medical problem requiring you to take your cats outside (on a semi-perminant basis)
