To be fair, the idea that owners/operators routinely maintained and overhauled locos etc “back in the day” with two teaspoons and a tableknife, isn’t really true.
My late father had a layout using Triang and Hornby Dublo, back in the early 1960s. He routinely took locos no more complex than Lionel PW ones to the hobby shop for maintenance and repair, and the shop obviously did enough of that sort of business to remain open.
He simply didn’t have the tools, skills and workshop space. He wasn’t incapable of using his hands, but his army experience as a heavy vehicle mechanic during the War had not taught him about electrical equipment, he knew that it was possible to do expensive damage through inexpert attention, and wasn’t about to risk that on what was, after all, an expensive item - those Triang locos were as big a bite from his earnings, as top-of-the-Line Lionel locos are today, if not more.
