Pat Kn posted:My club had an unfortunate event at this year's Holiday Open House. I was running trains and one of our guests said to me: "Excuse me, I think one of your trains is on fire". I looked over and I saw smoke coming up behind the circus tent. I said "You're right" and shut down power to the whole layout until I discovered the cause.
We has the polar express running on a small loop around our city scene. This loop is powered by an old ZW transformer. The polar express must have derailed behind the circus tent where I can't see it. The ZW's circuit breaker, as I just discovered, did not work. The car heated up and broke out in flames and the plastic caught fire. We put it out quickly and got everything running again minus one Polar Express Car. We are now in the market for an additional car for our set and a circuit breaker for the ZW. A little excitement but no real damage, except for the car. It could have been worse.
Wow, Pat. So glad the damage was limited to the one car and no one was injured. I use a pair of old Post War ZW's to power my layout - I used Jim Barrett's Backshop Video (vol. 8) to add fast acting circuit breakers to protect my trains, and they have saved my bacon several times already. I believe that individual segments of the videos are available online, just don't remember where.
