Model railroading is fun! …or so read the top of each issue of Model Railroader magazine for many years.
Is it?
Most of the time it sure is. We wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t fun, right? I love the hobby. Nothing like breaking in a new loco or adding a newly completed structure to the layout.
But what about these moments, every now and again, where we are compelled to do something as a part of the hobby that flat-out isn’t fun?
I’m not talking about ballasting or wiring or those things that some folks may not enjoy as much as others. I mean the stuff you hate.
Case in point. One of my prized locos developed a short after the last train show. It’s an all-metal boiler and tender on top of a Kato 2-8-2, so it’s a short waiting to happen. Add to it that I’m running DCC (the loco is still analog, awaiting a decoder install by a professional). I ended up tearing the thing apart today twice until I was able to eliminate the short (the tender pickup wires in the drawbar were touching).
Other such things; a turnout goes bad, a signal quits working, a loco begins stalling… Anyone else have those moments when you’re compelled to do something you don’t like at all in order to enjoy the hobby more later?
I pride myself on having high standards of track work, wiring, and mechanics as well as detail and scenery. But I’m far, far from perfect (nor will I ever get there). I expect, then, to maximize hobby enjoyment is to minimize those unenjoyable hobby moments!
Sorry. I still have to go with ballasting. The other little problems that crop up don’t really bother me that much. They are usually fixed in a short amount of time. Ballasting can ruin weeks of your hobby enjoyment.
Oh, I know exactly what you are talking about. I suppose its those moments that help us enjoy the good ones even more. One of my favorties… Why is it that when I glue the to walls together it takes a few minutes for the glue to dry, but yet, my fingers will stick instantly?
And yeah, it is a major drag when a good locomotive developes issues or any item for that matter. I love upgraded and tinkering, but really dont enjoy haveing to “fix” things. Oh well.
What’s that expression, the bitterness makes the sweet sweeter?
Hi Dave, A friend of mine repairs locos, and another friend of mine works for Atlas Model RR.Both of them have told me
NEVER,NEVER,NEVER run a DC loco on DCC!!!
It’s the QUICKEST way to burn up a motor!!!
Before I switched to DCC, I had 18 steam engines ( all HO) with no decoders, so they set and wait decoder installation.The only locos running now are my BLI sound equipped locos of which I have 5, an M1a, an M1b, a J1, and two T1 Duplexes, all PRR logo engines.
I know the “never run a DC loco on DCC” argument has strictly drawn battle lines, so I’m not looking to cross them.
I’m running Digitrax, which does allow the “parlor trick” of running analog (DC) locos alongside DCC locos (using address 00). It creates a very interesting hum as the DCC signal is attmepting to fool the DC motor into thinking it’s getting variable voltage.
It’s a trick best done less frequently, of course. In my case the 2-8-2 in question generally hauls a through freight that loops a few times and then returns to staging (where the track power is toggled off).
You HO folks don’t have anything close to the problems we N scalers face with or dearth of DCC-ready steamers, let alone Pennsy steam.
Amen, brother! Even after you get semi-competent at it, nothing’s as frustrating as ballasting-gone-bad. No the least of the problems is how hard (and messy) it can be to fix ballast problems.
Trying to get that dirty spot cleaned inside my large tunnel is my pet peeve. It’s not fun at all most of the time. And Murphy’s Law states that it’s always the spot out of reach that the loco will stall on…
I’m with Canazar on this one. It’s the CA on the fingers for sure.
Ballasting isn’t bad, as long as you do it as you move along so you don’t have scale miles to complete all at once. Besides, there’s just no way around it, and once it’s done you can see the results. Maybe the worst part of ballasting for me is waiting for the glue to dry, so I can clean up and run trains over that track. Besides, once the ballast is done, the loose grains chipped off and the track cleaned, then it’s time to share the job with a photo or two. And that is one of my favorite things in the hobby!
Hopefully, you don’t see the glue seams, though. Usually, glue work is something I do on the workbench, and I’ve still got a lot of painting, decalling and weathering ahead of me. There’s no great sense of accomplishment when I’m done glueing something, whether I keep my fingers clean or not.
I think my most unenjoyable hobby moment will be ripping apart my P2K SD45 to relube the trucks. I mean it dosn’t seem that bad. But for me it will be somthing I will never forget.
Most of my ‘un-fun’ moments involve unpacking equipment after moves - and discovering that things which had been working perfectly had become candidates for major overhaul.
Things that fail in ordinary operation don’t really bother me. After all, Murphy rides the prototype rails, too. At least we can clean up our little “opportunities” with hand tools.
I think I finally have my trackplan to the point where the most unpleasant aspect about the hobby is me. I have managed to keep my temper in check this past year tuning the track, and tuning commercial and handlaid turnouts (the latter were my first ones and needed some PCB ties replaced…I actually did it in situ…quite proud of that). So, when “we” get oopses, the fingers all point to me. Wrong points set, usually.
But the big killer for me over the past 6 months has been cheap cars with cheap floppy press-in trucks (split plastic pin that you snap into place) all with plastic wheels. Those plastic wheels have axles with a very tiny conical section at the end of a longer cone, not like the Proto 2000 wheelsets and others with the simple cone. So guess how well they tag along.
I have figured out, finally, that building a layout is about as good as it can get early on in one’s “career”. Later, as skills and patience, even wisdom, intervene on one’s behalf, the outcome becomes a worthy thing. Right now, I’m workin’ on it.
I bought a walthers warehouse on ebay and it arrives smashed. Seller was NOT at fault. Im thinking of calling it “Mashedbox Incorperated” or something.
A day later it was rebuilt and repaired to it’s former glory. But not yet finished. In fact, I am past the unpleasant task of making sure I find all the smashed peices and now enjoy the joy of having a building that literally fits together minus a glue spot here or something else there. Nothing that a little paint or weathering cant fix.
But the most unpleasant? I bought a Bman GS4 4-8-4 as a child and it turned it’s wheels and spun em with 5 cars hooked to it’s tender. It later splits the axles and fries the pancake motor as a final insult to injury. 40 dollars was alot of money to waste back in those days of Brass and Can motors. Wadda junk.
Probably my least enjoyable moments are either when some nearly microscopic detail part or screw goes missing, or when I hurt myself. The worst accident I had was when I was 15 and I was using my X-acto #11 knife on a fighter jet model. I was taking some flash off of a part when it snagged, then kicked away from the part and dug point-first into my finger. That hurt like H-E-double-hockey-sticks. It bled so badly, I had to go to the hospital. I was woozy from the blood loss for the rest of the day!
I can pretty much plan on losing some critical part when I’m working on something at the workbench. The most notorious pieces are those little spacers that the screws run through to hold together a split frame N scale drive. When they come to clean out the house after I’ve met my reward, someone’s going to find about 2 dozen of those little buggers hiding in the floor boards.
Also, while I am a dedicated devotee of DCC, there are still mysteries I’ll never be able to solve. I have a pair of old Atlas/Kato RS-3’s, and they were starting to get a little shaky, so I put them on the shop track, figuring to clean the wheels at some point. Well, a couple weeks go by, and one of them cleans up fine, and is back in service. The other, sits there. Blinks its lights forward and back, but no motor. Fine. Put him on the program track, readback the address, the starting voltage, the various pertinent CV’s… nothing. Lights on, no one home. So I pull it apart to inspect the connections. Everything looks fine. Put it back together. Reset the decoder to default… Address is now 3, but still no go a go-go.
So, next I have to completely take it apart, and check the motor contacts with straight DC to see if there’s not another parts order on the horizon… I still wouldn’t trade my DCC for the world, I just wish those little ghosts and gremlins would leave a more obvious trail to follow.
Yea, ya know, life happens sometimes and we just have to take it with a grin and accept it huh!
A recent unenjoyable hobby moment for me was when I was working on putting together one of my inspection pits for the roundhouse project. I had already built the first of the six that I planned, now I was working on the 3rd one and for some reason the walls would just not stay straight or remain attached no matter how many applications of CA or Loctite I applied. The kit just would not stay together. I had to walk away for a few days and start all over, took a different approach which I thought was already worked out in the original pit that was error free. Go figure, same kit, same set of parts, same techinques, different outcome.
I finally got the remaining kits built and guess it was a learning experience for me in being able to find more than one way to tackle a specific project.
What I hate is not enough funds for all the things i want to have and build on my layout. Oh yeah my first attempt at ballast…[X-)] did not got too well. looked like grape nuts…i scraped it all off and its good enough for government work. Its my first layout so everythinkg is a learnning process. When i get older iwill get a bigger house and use my trail and errors now to build better later.
The other thing i hate are pricing of nice locos. Some poeple think we are stupid or nutz. I see a train at FTD for $240 and then the same thing is on ebay for $495. [:O] get real…or a loco no longer made is listed on ebay for $270 and sold retail at $180 at a LHS when it first came out. Swelling heads against my shrinking wallet.
All good arguments for the “worst” part of the job. But we have it easy, just think about those live steam guys. If something goes wrong, it’s not just a few hours of work to find that one wire with that little piece of insulation rubbed off or the burned out motor…
Then again, we’re (mostly) striving for prototypical accuracy. Thay always had to re-ballast (we don’t - yay for Elmers!), re lay track, check everything on the locomotives, and a million other things. So I argue that these things we hate to do are our best approximations of prototypical day-to-day ops.