When does it start being fun?

EXAMPLE 2:

My Christmas set ran perfectly fine for 15 minutes - it's on PW full 'O' track with 31" curves and zero switches.  How do I explain this after 15 minutes of perfect running?

Walt,

Are you related to Al Capp's Joe Btfsplk?

Ron M

Not sure I like the look in that helicopter's eyes....

Walt,

It seems that you are suffering from a curse for selling off all of your Pittsburgh themed cars---the force is out there.

Norm

is that they guy in the comics that had the black cloud above his head in the comic strip??  If it is, the techies where I worked made that my screen saver!!!!!

- walt

I hadn't noticed, but now that you mentioned it I double checked the image - how appropriate that it came apart right there, huh?!

- walt

Maybe you're right Norm.  Actually, I have been 2nd guessing my decision given the way things have been going so far with tin-plate.

Without trying to sound like a completer whiner, I haven't enjoyed more than 5 minutes running this tin-plate stuff.  Every single time something comes up and I just shut it off in disgust.

Walt,  The fun begins when you decide that it does.  I am sorry that you are having such a frustrating time.  

I have found that I need to check the screws that hold the drive rods on all of my steam engines before I run them.  The screws have a way of working their way out.  The engine that I don't check is the one that looses its drive rods.

 I don't know about the other derailment.  Perhaps there is a loose screw in one of the trucks or a track joint came apart or something fell on the track.  I am amazed that the smallest thing can cause a derailment.  This happens to me several times a year on my layouts.  I had a train run for a couple of hours unattended at a train show and then for a reason I could never determine there was a major derailment.  I think that something may have gotten overheated.

Best wishes for good luck in the future.   Happy Thanksgiving.  Joe

I gotta be honest with you, Walt…I've been in this hobby for a good many years and I don't think I've ever heard of someone having more negative experiences than you have had in just a few short weeks.

I love tinplate.  I have a fairly large collection of MTH and LCT tinplate, and have had only one problem with one locomotive in some seven or so years since I started buying O gauge tinplate.  And that problem was easily corrected by MTH Service.

Truthfully, if I had your range of unfortunate and diverse experiences, I would have given up tinplate altogether and gone with "regular" O gauge.  Carrying that one step further, I probably would have gone with Williams by Bachmann stuff because it's about as dependable as you're going to find and it's backed by a limited lifetime warranty (none of the others even come close).  You, my friend, appear to be someone who really needs that limited lifetime warranty!

I want you to have an enjoyable experience with your trains this Christmas (and every Christmas thereafter), and it's really very distressing to read account after account of your unfortunate discoveries.  I hope that cloud lifts, and darn soon!

Walt,

   I have found some the couplers on the 2600 cars are tight.  Never had any problems with the 2800 cars. I don't recall exactly what I did to fix them. I have a lot of MTH Tinplate and I think they could do better on some of the minor problems with the trucks and couplers. Cars that are wiggly on the bolsters is another problem. 

  Check to see if the tender truck swivels freely, I had one with screws coming out the bottom of the frame, very slightly, preventing the trucks from turning full range.

  Some of this stuff should not happen. But over all, running Tinplate with DCS makes up for the minor problems.

If you have to ask, you're in the wrong hobby. 

Larry

Oh Walt I kinda feel your pain! I'm the guy that has tons of old style Real Trax and every time I set it up, something doesn't connect electrically.    The dang "tangs" that allow electricity to flow will snap/fall/disintegrate off.   But this year I got it all to work!  Have a nice Christmas Carpet Central up and running like a charm.

     What did I do different?  Not much really...........I just looked at each track end - with magnifying lenses much as a jeweler) ; re-bent EACH of the  tangs so they all SHOULD align.   That pretty much was it along with tedious patience, and a "git 'er done" attitude change.  Your problems seem sh##ty right now, but work each one through.  This coming from a guy who ALMOST didn't start a Christmas layout.  Oh yeah.....if it helps my MOST favorite K Line F7 diesels ABA aren't working well at all........they ran like an Elgin watch when I put 'em away 2 - 3 years ago.  Always something, but I will press on to fix the buggers.  Good Luck to you. I am sending some of my Karma to you if you read this..........      

If you purchase original prewar tinplate, all the bugs will have probably been worked out by now.

Years ago, I had a friend that every time he sat next to me at an event, he would punch me in the ribs with his elbow, and say "Bob, life's just one da*n thing after another, ain't it"?

I have had repeated calamitous events over time, some self inflicted and some just because it's the nature of the beast.  But lately everything is running smoothly.  Probably because I simplified it and some because I replaced "miles" of track with what I consider a superior product.

Walt,

The screw is probably laying in the track somewhere.  Find it and put it back together.

Also, get some BLUE Loctite and put it on the screw threads.  This will keep it from coming out again on its own, but if you ever need to get it loose, you can get it to break free with a screwdriver.

Hello Walt.........

Use white glue on the threaded hole of the driver where the screw goes in (just a TINY drop) is all you need and let it sit over night to dry but be sure to wipe of excess glue. I did that to my Sunset 3rd brass large Santa Fe steamer and no problems.  I got that advice from Scott Mann of Sunset 3rd rail. The side rod screws did come off on my engine few times but after the white glue, problems stopped and 15 hours of running time, so far so good.

the woman who loves the S.F.5011,2678

Tiffany

I use purple Loctite on all the rod screws, it's the mildest thread locker, but sufficient for this task.  My then brand new Legacy T1 Duplex pole vaulted off the tracks when a rod screw fell out at a modular club outing, I was fortunate that no damage was done, but it got my attention!  I did find the screw about 30 feet down the tracks, so it ran a spell before the rod managed to grab.

The screws are available if you can't find that one.

Walt,

Time to call in a professional . . .

Walt,

    Now i know why in the past two years of posting pics of the layout setup there is a bottle of booze.  This hobby will at times drive ya to drink!  You can always come back to the darkside!  Back to the future!

Good luck!

Chris

Oh Boy...This is gonna be hard...

Walt

  I was looking over my tender similar to yours and I recall that I removed the remote lift pin on the tender coupler. I beleive that may have caused your derailment shown in your photo. Don't forget some of the 2600 cars have tight couplers. I also looked closer at the tender pin and mine seems to stick upward enough. All this stuff needs minor adjustments.

it starts being fun when you make it fun.  when some thing goes wrong just look at it and fix it and go on and lol about it.  

This reminds me of the string of bad luck Scrapiron Scher had several years ago.

Hang in there!  Good things have to be coming your way!

--Greg

I have such bad luck with trains that frankly I am excited when it does run right out of the box. My last three new Lionel purchases have all been defective in one way of the other. The most recent is the Silver Bells set with an engine that does not smoke. Oh well, at least it runs, plays the music, and the wife is happy. She stated she will get it fixed after Christmas. As far as tinplate I bought a Christmas set with the PS 3.0 249 engine and it runs but not through my portable layout with the Dorfan bridge. Bummer since that is one place I really wanted to run it. So, while I Cal Stewart this year I went and found a little 248 boxcab in red, bought a couple of parts and that little engine ran for almost 2 days straight. Of course towards the end of the last day there were unexplained derailments and the normal weird stuff that happens to me........

Still had fun. These things are toys. I understand that there is a lot of talent, effort, and heart put into collecting, scale building, restoration, etc. Reality is that these trains provide a change from your daily life and therefore all of the frustration, fun, and trials in between are frankly far more fun than work.

I would suggest choosing a couple of units that you have fixed and run them first, put a smile on your face, and then hit it head on and make it fun. Sometimes I will get with my train buddies with the conversation of my train failure can out do yours. yes it is weird but remember.......toys.

So, have a great Thanksgiving everyone and run them trains! (or throw the burnt carcass across the layout and try again )

Guess I shouldn't have made the Exorcist joke. Wife just informed that the oven has crapped out. No biggy except we have 13 people coming over. Oh well at least it's not train related!

Happy Turkey day everyone.

bottle up all those gripes for now, the season is near ...

...for the rest of us!

With your size holiday set up and the amount of trains you run, I don't think it's going to be easy to make a sudden change in a different direction. I don't know your layout's history, but I bet it grew over time.

I have streaks of bad luck that would make your head spin like Linda Blair's.

When these streaks occur, I hear this name a lot.... 

LMAO

Festvus for the rest of us!

The Airing of grievances!

Larry

Fun?????  Since when is a job supposed to be fun????  Now, a hobby like higher mathematics...well, that's fun!

OK Robert, I'll bite - I have a Masters in Math - I don't recall any part of getting it fun though!

I was watching the side rods last night and what's odd about that screw coming undone is that the rod, if anything, would force the screw to get tighter. 

thanks - walt

Walt, my just-for-fun reply was based on a very old cartoon that appeared in Model Railroader back in 1959.  The set up was that the man's job was model railroading and his hobby was higher mathematics.

Never heard that one Robert, or saw it.  But I was wondering what prompted your comment - now I know!

- walt

it starts being fun as soon

as you purchase your 1rst

train.

have had many derailments

at shows. but that's what

makes it fun, tryin to keep

everything running on time.

have at it. keep em runnin

fast and furious

Either when you see the kids faves light up or you laugh at yourself for dor doing something silly!!!

There you go, trying to apply logic to model trains!

Walt,

   I guess I am one of the guys that has all the fun, my original Lionel 263E and the MTH Repro with all their rolling stock runs great, especially on FasTrack, RealTrax is fine also as long as you do not keep taking it up and down.  Walt I got to tell ya, some of this is perspective, having spent most of my life either Aero-Space Engineering or

in the military, it's hard for me to gripe with a belly full of food and nobody shooting at me.  My wife is a retired music teacher, she was watching me the other day and I was unaware that it was happening, she finally walked into the room where I was putting

our Christmas layout up, put her arms around me, stopping me from working, and said

I want you to know that there is nobody on earth who could ever replace you, I want you to understand what you mean to me. I know that I am appreciated and in reality I have always been a realist, I make things happen in life, God gave me that ability.  I know that there are others that look at life, as an up hill grind, for me however life is a blessing and working with the Christmas trains, is just another part of that blessing, it has always been fun sense my Grandfather explained our family tradition to me as a boy.  It has remained that way all of my life.

PCRR/Dave 

The fun began for me in 1949 at Christmas time.

Hey Walt, even a bad day with your trains beats a good day at work, at least my work anyway.  I guess you just have to keep it all in perspective.  Yeah it stinks that you keep having problems but you will get the problem sorted out and things will work as they should sooner or later.  I'll share a little story that happened to me which really helped me to enjoy our hobby all the more.

Last year at Trainfest in Milwaukee I participated in the SGMA layout for the first time.  I brought a few of my favorite trains to run, one of which is my green 390E (a reproduction).  While it was on the layout a switch was accidentally thrown and it swithed tracks and ultilmately had a head-on collision with a huge Lionel Milwaukee Road Hudson.  My engine was thrown off the track and came to rest on it's side near the beast of a Hudson who, by the way, didn't leave the track.  My wife and kids were at the show with me and all three expected me to freak out, they know how much I love my trains and how careful I am with them.  The funny thing is that if you'd have asked me what my reaction would have been prior to the crash I would have said that I would freak out.  Surprisingly, I wasn't upset at all.  The engine ended up with a couple of paint chips and scrapes but I just put it back on the track and it started right up and ran like nothing ever happened.  The guy who accidentally switched the track was very apolgetic but I told him not to worry, it was no big deal.  I found that right after the accident I had a little moment of clarity.  These things are toys and they are meant to be played with and as a result of being played with they will inevitably get banged up from time to time.  That's OK.  That's how the original trains that I also collect got dinged up, someone was playing with them, aka, having fun and as a result they ended up with some scars and bumps and bruised.  The neat thing is a year later at Trainfest, my kids (9 and 10 years old) kept talking about the crash, it's now a part of that engine's life story which I hope one of my kids tells their own kids and maybe even grandchildren when they are running that engine and pointing out the dings in the future.  Ultimately, none of this is life or death, it's playing with toys.  I have found that keeping that in mind especially when things go wrong, I manage to keep this stuff in perspective and have a much better time playing with my trains.

Hang in there Walt, you'll be glad you did,

John. 

PineCreekRailroad: you'll like this.  Saturday evening the trains started running great.  Not on the trackage that I had planned for them to run on, but at least they started staying on the track and the drawbar connections are staying connected.

So in church Sunday morning I was thinking "God, I scream at you at times and ask 'Why me?'.  I think you keep teasing me so that when things finally turn around I'm all the more happy and in some way to learn to keep the faith.  They always say that God works in strange ways".

True story.

BTW: I ran them everyday this past week with absolutely no problems, short of one that I showed in my Ghost thread on the main forum.  It finally was FUN!!!

- walt

Walt,

   No doubt about it, the Supreme Archetict works in his own mysterous ways, and maybe he is just trying to keep your attention, so you never loose interest.

PCRR/Dave