greatest goofs?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Here’s a thred that could give everyone a good laugh: What were your greatest goof(s)? I don’t mean any harm with this post; It’s just one of those things you think of every day (or when you mess up on a project) “Did anyone else have a simaller situation?” Well, here’s the chance to find out.

Unfortunately, it is possible that some of the postings may provoke laughter, but remember: there laughing WITH you, not at you. Besides, I’m sure everyone has (or will) make (or made) the same mistake (s) at some point in time.

To stert things off, I’ll tell you of some of my most memorable goofs, starting with the most recent:

The 0-4-0 Dockside Blues: I’m sure you remember this thred, which I posted a few weeks ago. I had a little 0-4-0 dockside from Browser Mfg. Co., which stopped working (right after I gave it to my friend) and I was truely puzzled, untill it was mentioned that the gear could be cracked (and a 23-tooth gear from an Athern loco would be a good replacement) I replaced the cracked gear. Yes, I did check to see if it was cracked before tearing into it. To make a long story sort of short, I reassembled the axles, minding the drive wheel’s quartering, and re assembled the locomotive. Unfortunately, I messed up somewhere along the line, and the ewngine is dead, kaput, non operating, etc.,etc.,etc. Well I (by this time) have given up hope of getting it to run, and offered to give my friend another locomotive (has yet to be decided) And, so far, the locomotive is on the back burner, and I’m unsure as to weather it will run again. Oh well, sometimes the gremblins get in there, and won’t come out.

The SD 40-2’s free-fall No, I didn’t take this locomotive sky-diving.

It was a Union Pacific SD 40-2,an Athern blue-box kit, which had been at my local hobby shop for some time, with my admiring eyes looking it over everytime I we

2

I’m a newbie, and I thought I could run a non DCC loco on my new NCE system, whooops fried it completely, dead, kaput!

Other newbie mistakes:

Ruined / damaged 3 peco switches, ooops!
Trying to use 3M adhesive spray glue on the pink foam… oooops!

I’m sure there’s more to come…

3

Many years ago when I was first in the hobby, I built a freight station following plans in one of the magazines. The plans were drawn in O and I was converting them to HO as I went. About the time I was getting ready to do the roof I realized that I had forgotten to scale the doors down. They were all O size.

I never did finish it.

Enjoy

Paul

4

While working on the layout one day, there was a forty car cut of cars in the way. I pushed the lead car away from me, not bothering to see where the other end was. In short a Atlas 33000 Gal. Tank car took the plunge after being pushed through a closed turnout. I could just hear my father from the grave

“ITS GOT TWO ENDS YA KNOW!”[:-^]

Thanks goodness for a soft carpet. Only a broken coupler resulted. Lesson learned.

Brent

5

Mine was the time I had a sweet little craftsman structure kit and one of the first steps was to layout and cut out the walls and window/door openings from a sheet of milled clapboard siding sheetwood. After I got everything carefully cut out I discovered that the siding was upside down on all of the pieces - There’s no fixing that. I found some other siding and used that, but it was sure painful to have screwed up something so basic (the instructions even warned me to be careful).

6

I once purchased a walkaround throttle that was powered off of the constant DC terminals on my power pack. In addition to wiring part of it backwards, I hooked it up but neglected to disconnect the power pack’s old variable DC connection to the track. Fried both the power pack and the new throttle.

7

My personal best to date was during a branchline passenger building frenzy. I built the majority of 4 cars, minus the couplers because I wanted to use some kd’s and was out. I grabbed a bunch the next day and lined up all the cars and put all the couplers on assembly line style. When I grabbed them and put on the track they looked a little odd since I put all the couplers on upside down[banghead]. In my defense, they were right side up when I put them on, the dang cars were wrong side up[:D]

8

Man, you all got me beat. I had a good yesterday morning. On Monday night, I thought I threw an empty jar of Pollyscale paint in the trash. Well, Tuesday afternoon I was going to use some new Pollyscale paint for a project and you probably guessed it, I threw away a new bottle of paint away. The most horrible thing about the whole situation was that the trash crew already took the trash away.

9

Built a Walther’s Grain Elevator, trim and sanded all the sides, painted the inside black, out side egg shell white. Painted all the frames in the windows. Started assembling the main building when I saw Walther’s had sent me 2 of the same wall and I was missing the wall that went on the rail side? [:-^] Guess I should have looked at the instructions better!

Other time I did not have the turnout thrown the right way and ran a Mono freight train into the rear of a parked train. One of my Walther’s tank cars hit the floor, never found all the parts.

I as well have installed more than my fair share of couples up side down as well!

Cuda Ken

10

Built a Walther’s Grain Elevator, trim and sanded all the sides, painted the inside black, out side egg shell white. Painted all the frames in the windows. Started assembling the main building when I saw Walther’s had sent me 2 of the same wall and I was missing the wall that went on the rail side? [:-^] Guess I should have looked at the instructions better!

Other time I did not have the turnout thrown the right way and ran a Mono freight train into the rear of a parked train. One of my Walther’s tank cars hit the floor, never found all the parts.

I as well have installed more than my fair share of couples up side down as well!

Cuda Ken

11

Well, probably the worst was when demonstrating the previous layout to the neighbor kids. The layout was only halfway around at that point, and I was showing off the sound-equipped Trainmaster. Unfortunately I had the momentum up pretty far to get a nice power up effect when starting off and coming to a stop. The last 3 cars of the train all took the giant plunge to the floor. Being those Kato covered hoppers, which are made with a funky plastic and basically just snap together, they instantly reconverted themselves to kits. All but one stirrup step were located almost imeediately, a couple days later I found the one missing one. Amazingly nothing broke - I just had a box of pieces like when I started.

–Randy

12

I got a really good deal on a G-scale power pack that had momentum and brake controls, and a nice little “sound system” built-in-- you know the kind, it can go “Choo choo”, “Whoo whoo”, “Honnnnnnnk honnnnnk” and it had a nice “Ding ding” bell sound. I figured it would be the perfect item to use for our G-scale trains…

When it arrived I opened it up and there was clearly something rattling around inside. So I figured that’s why the previous owner had sold it. Electronics wizard that I am, I set about loosening all the screws and whatnot to take it apart. I got 'em all out and was still having trouble getting the top cover off. Then-- in one of those forehead-slapping moments (Duh!)-- I realized the knobs were still attached… so I looked for the little set screws and couldn’t find any. “Must be press ons…” thought I, and grabbed a pair of channel lock pliars and gave a twist! That knob came right off… and the shaft of the pot right along with it. Bright spot that I am, I proceeded to yank out the other one.

Well, sure enough the top came right off after that. And I looked inside and there was a loose screw, a nut and two fiber washers. And it was clear where they were supposed to go. So I got it all fixed up, kinda proud of myself for being so handy, and went to put the lid back on. No problem there. Got all the screws put back in and then went to press the shaft/knobs back in… uh oh… that’s when I noticed that they had been originally welded into place.

Ooops!

Well, so now its a nice project for a rainy day. [D)]

John

13

These types of threads have been posted in the past over the years on this forum but they are always good for a laugh when they do pop up again. Besides the usual train hitting the floor or crashing into another train going down the wrong track, My greatest goof was more of a safety issue than a modeling mistake. One of the layouts I was building back in the 80’s in a rental house had a few hard to reach locations. The layout was a dogbone double main that was in a garage and if any of you have ever been to Texas in the summertime, you understand how hot it can get in a garage down here.

I was testing a new track I had just layed and without a shirt on and sweating like all get out, I layed across the rails to reach for a tool and wouldn’t you know it, I had left the MRC power pack on full throttle. Needless to say when my hot sweaty bare chested body hit the rails as i leaned over them, it lit me up like a christmas tree. I never knew an MRC power pack could throw such a punch. I learned really quick that electro shock therapy and model railroading don’t go together too well…chuck

14

Been there, done that.

I was lucky though. This was the first time that I was going to change over to Micro Trains couplers. I had a set of 4 Overton passenger cars and I had picked up the correct M T couplers and the coupler height gauge along with a few other odds and sods. I carefully measured everything up and drilled the hole for the mounting screw. I carefully mounted the coupler on the first end and then put the car on the track to check the coupler and trip pin height. The coupler height was perfect, but for some reason the trip pin height didn’t work out. DOH!!! Because I wasn’t to sure of what I was doing, I only put one coupler on upside down.[banghead]

Blue Flamer.

15

My first DCC decoder installation. I hardwired a an old Bachmann/Lenz decoder (large long board) into an Athearn blue box PA-2. Everything went well. I isolated the motor from the frame by snipping of the two metal fingers on the bottom strip as needed and put a couple of layers of electrical tape in the motor well. I then soldered a wire to the bottom strip to attach to the negative wire of the decoders motor drive. I reassembled the loco attaching the needed wires along the way. At this point I wasn’t interested in making this a long term installation. I mean, this was after all an old Bachmann piece of crap decoder. So I was just twisting the wires together and wrapping the wires with electrical tape. I put the loco on my improvised program track that I’d put together for the EZ-Command I had back then and everything seemed good. I then put it on the main track and punched up address 3 which is what it was set for. Advanced the throttle, and , nothing. The loco just sat there. I check the motor connections. They were all good. I them pulled on the wires attached for pickup. No reaction when I pulled on the wires for the positive hookup on the trucks. I then pulled on the wires going to the frame (as this was a hot frame model) and the loco jumped forward then stopped. A quick investigation showed that the headlight bracket clip the wires were attached to was a little loose and when I moved it a little it made contact, no enough though to maintain permanent contact. A little paste flux and a little hot solder soon fixed that problem. Lesson learned from that experience was to never trust an electrical connection to be good unless it’s clean and tight. Metal to metal isn’t always good enough. Another problem on the same loco was that the junction point between the frame and the trucks got dirty quickly and it wasn’t long before I had to solder wires to the trucks for the negative pickup.

16

I’m not certain if this counts as a “goof” - it sounds like rather poor product design instead. Was there a different way to access the interior of the control without removing the knobs, or was it like that cheap '80s electronic stuff with pop-rivets instead of screws, that you had to drill out to access the interior for repairs?

17

MY biggest goofs were taking the “good enough” approach to some of my trackwork. This has resulted in tearing up old track to replace it. I had used a piece of used flextrack without checking it thoroughly, only to find a section of it had a vertical kink in it. My next project is replacing a curved turnout (which is on the way as we “speak”) and some diverging track to clean up a real mess; including a piece of track coming off the inner curve that’s about an inch and a half long. Don’t ask me what I was thinking. I’ll “feature” the before and after with pics; “What NOT to do”.

_**What NOT to do.**_

18

I have had many over the years…One that stands out in my memory was the first time I used denatured alcohol to remove lettering…

Not only did I remove the letter but,the paint as well!

19

I agree about poor product design-- but I was looking for a ‘goof’ and that was the best I could do on short notice… [:-^] I think the knobs were really of the press-on type but that they had been glued into place by either the manufacturer or else somebody else. They weren’t broken before I pulled them out though, I’m reasonably sure of that since they weren’t just falling out. And you could feel them turning their pots inside. In any case, I now have a new project. Someday when I get a Round Tuit I’ll pull it back out, swap out the pots and put it back together.

John

20

Bought an undecorated Atlas GP-40 high hood and painted and decalled it for the Southern Railway and then proceeded to proudly post pics of it on the Yahoo Southern Railway Group. I was quickly informed that the Southern Railway never had any GP-40’s

Well that got me started doing research on the prototype before buying bogus locos or starting projects on loco paint schemes that never existed. I ended up repainting the GP-40 for the N&W and buying a rail power products GP40-X shell and working it into a fair representation of a Southern GP40-X.