What Went Wrong? Your mistakes/failures/horror stories... Let's share them

Well... there was this woman named Debi...

Our museum used to have a big problem with Z-stuff switch machines flipping when trains were running over them. One time I was running my Lionel Hiawatha and a switch flipped under the baggage car, sending the rear truck of the baggage car and the rest of the train onto a parallel track. I watched in horror as the train rolled on down two tracks at once, until the baggage car broadsided a pillar between the two tracks. Fortunately there was no damage. 

Z-stuff was always pretty good about replacing the switch machines that went bad. They seem to have improved their quality control, as we have been having less trouble lately than a few years ago. 

Well, no doubt many people remember my using Simple Green to clean Fastrack.  That sort of stands out in my memory . . . 

Mistake?  Yes.  

Failure?  No - it did a really good job of cleaning the track.

Horror story? Definitely, watching the track just slowly corrode away only a few weeks later.  "Help . . . .  I'm melting. . . I'm meeeellllltttting . . . !" 

Addendum to the above:  You guys all know what happens at 16, etc.  That explains

the trains going out the window.

     Hoppy

My mistake was stumbling into a hobby store when I was on leave while I was still in the Navy and out of the hobby for about 10 years.  Seeing the at-the-time new stuff on the shelves then picking up a copy of OGR at the counter, I instantly fell off the O gauge train sobriety bandwagon, and never got back on again!

About 4 years ago I went to a gun show in York and had the wrong date.  Turns out the Fall Large Scale Show was in full swing.  I got back in my car to drive away and decided what the heck, I hadn't been to a train show in over twenty years.  I was bit hard by the O bug and  went home and spent the next couple of weeks reading up on Lionel, MTH, Atlas and other O manufactures.  I made a list of every train store address I could find in the Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.  I even made it to a few in New York.  My weekends for the next several months were planned around visiting as many stores as I could.  I bought my first MTH E4400 from Jim's Trains in Homer City shortly before he closed.  I visited Jason's Train Store at the original location and his last location.  It's a shame he couldn't keep it going.  He was a great guy to deal with.  Now several thousand dollars invested and still not operational.  Maybe I should stay home on the weekends.

They say there are 10 major mistakes you can make in designing/building a model railroad. I've made all 13 of them.

Actually, off the top of my head:

1. Too much track.
2. Track following edge of straight benchwork
3. Track too close to edge of benchwork.
4. Track too far from edge of benchwork.
5. Curves too sharp.
6. Reverse curves. I've become a "annoying ex-reverse curve" guy like an annoying ex-smoker.
7. Too many locomotives
8. Too few locomotives.
9. Insufficient design analysis
10. Too much design analysis -- sometimes easier to build test platforms. RR-Track simulator has helped.

I made a half million dollar mistake once. I chose the wrong location inside the Mall of America to open enterTRAINment. Of course, at the time I made the decision, I really had no data to base it on. It was a total crap shoot.

My most memorable mistake occurred once I finished the tables for my layout.  I had the vision of an "old school" Lionel layout. I covered the whole thing in green outdoor carpet....a few months later I found videos on YouTube like Eric's trains and decided to do a modern highly detailed layout.  Ive spent countless hours dealing with that carpet!!!

My first layout back in the late 70s.

It was an HO layout on a 4x8 sheet of plywood.  Of course I had to have the obligatory mountain in one corner so after finishing it I ran my train.

First trip thru the mountain the engine derails, I had to use a cane fishing pole to get it out

So I decide to cut an access hole underneath so if I had any more derailments I could easily reach inside and get to the train.

After cutting the hole I ran my train a few times and all was well, until I hear this odd sound followed my the sight of my Bachmann 4-8-4 taking a nose dive thru the access hole

I was broken.  I picked up the engine to survey the damage and found that one of the siderods was off on one end.  The retaining screw had come out, causing the siderod to fall down and jackknife the engine thru the hole.

I contacted Bachmann and they said to send the engine in (which had been painted into a ACL Class R-1).  They mailed back a brand new engine with my old boiler shell at no charge!

I still have that engine, and needless to say, none of my layouts since then have included a mountain/tunnel.

Of  all my mistakes (and there are countless mistakes) the one that still gets me is trying to install seperate digital volt and amp meters to monitor my 4 lines.

My mistake was in thinking this would be a quick and simple task.  Well it turned out not so quick and not so simple.  

After installing and wiring the meters I was getting all kinds of strange things on the meters.  One of the meters actually  burned out. Turns out I was getting feedback on the meters from the power used to illuminate the meters.  I used the same single power source to illuminate all the meters.

i asked a friend of my mine about it and he said I needed something called an Isolated Power Module for each meter to prevent the feedback. It worked like a charm.

Cost of fix - About $10.

Cost of aggravation and frustration - Priceless

Lesson learned - For me there are no quick and easy projects on the layout.

Putting up the Seasonal Display a few years ago i caught my finger between two modules while my son used a Ratchet to pull them together/ Crushed Finger and Loss of Nail on Middle finger Right hand/  Son and I were picking up the middle deck and he dropped his end which went to the floor and smashed his foot in the mean time my end slipped because of the Angle and I dropped my end which Resulted in both of us going to the Emergency Room the Doctors and the Nurses got a good laugh out of the story but I ended up with a Broken bone in the side of my foot and my son wound up with a Fractured Ankle/

Again the following year I was walking across the base section of the layout after securing the upper Deck my foot got caught on some loose Track section and Rammed a Track pin into the end of my Big Toe/ which caused me to loose my balance along with some other laungauge and I wound up falling toward the side wall and put my head through the wall where I had to stay till the wife was able to get a neighbor to come over to help me get out to which i was removed from the wall approximately a half hour after being stuck in it.  Wife was Hysterical and wanted to call 911 but i totally refused her to call  I was already embarased enough

Buying cheap switches...that I can't replace without completely reworking my layout...

When I was building my previous layout, it was essentially done with the exception of a bridge that went over the stairway going up to the train room. The stairway was solid oak and represented a drop below the bridge of 8 ft. I had removed the bridge for finishing touches and had a friend over to visit the layout. He was running trains in area not close to the bridge, but threw some switches and the Challenger he was running started heading straight for the bridge area. He froze at the handheld control. Well the Challenger then went into free fall into the stairwell. I envisioned this beautiful engine would be in pieces. When I rushed down to look at it, the only damage was the coal load in the tender came off. That's it. No scratches, no other damage. That Challenger was sure made to be solid.

My background is my bigs fail right now. Too many major wrinkles in the paper.

Showld have just painted the walls to like like northern Michigan woods.

But look at all the fun you had...

Okay Matt where are the other Three

There are lots of mistakes we all make, the ones that cause injuries are the worst. I have been to the emergancy room 3 times looking for metal particles in my eyes. Thank goodness they were only just scratches.

Here is my list:

1) Saving some or all of you layout from a previous home thinking you may reuse it...nope your better off taking it all down.

2) running trains while the main is not completed... Lost some details on a nice scale 0-8-0 switcher this way, as it hit the concrete floor.

3) Not installing backdrops in the begining of the layout phase

4) Not installing lighting in the begining of the layout phase

5) Using cheap switches w/o circuit breakers... I think my ticker lost a few years

6) Not using a large enough radii and enough clearance for those large locomotives I purchased

7) Not hiding the nicer Die Cast cars from the kids -

8) Not Having enough staging yards

9) Not running enough Electrical lines from the fuse box to the layout

One of my amusing failures is when I went to pour some rock molds, I kept adding water and plaster-of-paris indiscrimanetly figuring that it would mix up fine no mater when I added it.... 10 minutes later the wooden spoon was stuck solid in the center of the bucket and I had a perfect mold of you guessed it, a bucket...

"Torrance Man Burns House Down Working on Model Train Layout"

I'm thinking that would have been the headline in the local paper. A while ago I made the brilliant observation that cars roll better with a little weight added. Also I desired to put some authentic looking loads in my MTH PS5 drop-bottom gondola cars. My bright idea was to buy some steel welding stock bars at Lowes and then cut to fit with one of those rebar cutting blades on my miter saw. Then I would have weight + the benefit of industrial looking steel beam loads to put in the gondolas. What a great solution! First attempts went well and I was pleased with the results. Next step was to buy thicker stock but I realized that a painters mask would be needed to avoid breathing noxious fumes also ear phones for the noise. Safety glasses -- check, breathing mask -- check, ear phones -- check. Totally isolated from sound and smell I started cutting and man the sparks really flew! Done with the cut and over to the sink to quench the hot metal. Turned around and that's when I saw the smoke . Although I had put a backstop behind the miter saw to stop the sparks from flying all over the garage I had forgotten about the little dust catcher bag filled with sawdust.  It was "fully involved" at this point. Fortunately I was able to just grab the bag wire frame and just toss it out the front of the open garage door. With all my head gear on had I not seen the smoke I would not have heard or smelled anything. Also, instead of turning around I could just have easily walked into the house (attached garage) and gone into the kitchen or bathroom.

Today I buy my authentic looking gondola loads on the internet. No more metal cutting. If you read this laugh all you want just don't tell my wife!

Hmmm, Scott guess we could just wait til we see you both to bring it up? <GRIN>

Something like, Hello Mrs. Johnson, has Scott caused any new fires recently?

I will be in Huntington Beach for work in October, so I could always just do a drive by, leave the car running, open the car door run up to the door, knock, ask Mrs. J the question and then run before you get to the door?

Like that would be a short time with this old f_rt running a mile in 4 hours not 4 minutes!

All in fun! Take care and thanks for sharing!

I know have to think of my own addition to this thread!

    I was painting A gas station roof so I grabed A rattle can of black headed up to the front porch and shot it black. went back down to the basement and kept working on some trees. About an hour later went back up to check on the roof O NO it was gloss black. I did not look at the can. Back down to the basement grab A can of flat black went up and reshot the roof with the flat black. went back down to the basement to work on trees again. About another hour later go back up check on the roof. Now I am really PO the roof has tiny little cracks in the flat paint that are shinny in the cracks. Now I am ready to smash the roof and my dad tells me to calm down. He tells me that when A tar roof dries up some it gets cracks in it and the tar underneath looks shiny. Thankfully I did not smash the roof and it looks good on the layout.

Bobbie in WV -

Oh. My. Goodness. Laurel and Hardy have nothing on you. Priceless. And FAR funnier

now than it was at the time - er, times - for sure.

I, of course, have done nothing wrong, except for that time back in the 80's when

I put my old 2055 Hudson on the mantle (it had been in a box since 1967), my wife

asked me if it would still run, and I found the track and transformer, and, yes,

it still ran, and...

...here I am up to my gills in trains and train stuff. If I had only said "...dunno, honey -

I think I'll just display it", and just walked away. If only. 

I was running a passenger train on our club layout. My original 736 Berkshire from childhood and a string of Williams Madison cars. We had a Lionel Bascule Bridge installed on a return loop and it was in the up position. When my train approached the bridge the lighted passenger cars "jumpered" power to the safety block and my Berk kept right on going and ran off the open bridge.  Everything kinda went into slow motion like a gunfight scene in a Sam Peckinpah movie as I watched the Berk head for the (thankfully) carpeted floor. It bounced off a 1x4 support on the way down which broke its fall and the only damage the old loco suffered was a broken marker lamp which I fixed with epoxy. I have other engines which are worth far more monetarily but none with the sentimental value of that 736.  

I was running trains for some visitors when I heard a loud clunk on the other side of the layout.  The pictures show what I found.  A switch started malfunctioning and switching back and forth producing the sawtooth looking wreck in the pictures below.  It looks staged but it wasn't.  I had to get my camera to record it.  The switch has since been repaired.

Art

You're lucky they didn't decide to take a high dive to the floor. We had this happen at the club once -- bad switch machine.

Our seasonal community layout ran an HO line above the O line. The HO caboose derails, pulling everyone one of the 13 HO cars and engine over the edge, 16" down onto the O line. I watched the entire thing. By the time I realized that my 2-8-0 MTH PS2 with 18 cars was heading that way, at moderate steam, it was too late. The MTH plowed each one of those orphan Tyco cars, and kept on running! If only the Go-Pro would have been set up! It was a glorious disaster! Thank goodness I had one of those long reach claw things. Everyone clapped! After clearing the wreck one kiddo said AGAIN! AGAIN!

I'm still fairly new to layout building and have mistakes lined up that I don't even know are mistakes yet. You all here help a lot though, lots of things to watch out for from reading about your experiences and other many words of wisdom and advice offered.

How well I remember the time many years ago, when I left Marty Fitzhenry's house, loaded my trains into the car and somehow forgot that there was a small suitcase containing Hornby trains on the ground behind my car. (Or perhaps I put the suitcase on the roof and it slipped off).

In any event, I learned about it the hard way when I felt a strange bump as I backed up in the parking lot. 

Oddly enough I was able to restore the two lithographed 8 wheel coaches which had been flattened.  The locomotive had a bent cab, and the tender was unharmed.  Things could have been a lot worse.

Moral of the tale. Always check your car completely (including the roof) after loading.

Lew Schneider

No mistakes here just magnificent catastrophic learning experiences.

Don't park a passenger car across two isolated power blocks.

After cleaning the rollers on your engine make sure you didn't dribble any alcohol inside it before putting it back on the track,

When using staples to hold the fixed couplers together on your passenger cars you might want to be a little careful when running the train on an O27 loop at the top of a six tier display. 

I built my layout in modular fashion, and I was (mostly) extremely careful to make sure all the square corners were 90° - not 89 or 91. Somehow I botched one 3x3-foot connector section and when I got the whole thing bolted up, most of one side was at an angle to the wall. I could have ignored it; the error was less than half an inch in 13 feet, but I wanted it straight. So, I unbolted the connector section, took it completely apart, recut the 2x4's, replacing a couple of them, and put the whole thing back together. Took me at least two or three hours because I had to move a huge part of the layout that was held in place by the connector. In the end, it was worth it - the edge of the layout is now straight and parallel to the wall, and if I hadn't fixed it, it would have haunted me forever. 

If you're in the neighborhood you are truly welcome to stop by Dennis. Just give me a heads up via email so I can send you a non-disclosure agreement for you to sign in advance.

Scott, Will Do! Sunday I am planning to do some running around to see some of my old stomping grounds when I lived in the LA Area from 64-70.