A.D.D. Moments

[overall]

I was demonstrating my layout to a family friend and his two year old son tonight. I don't get many visitors to the train room. It's not that I don't want them, I do, it's just that I don't have that many train enthusist freinds in my town ( they all live in Nashville, some distance away). Anyway, I am trying to put on a good show for my visitors, by running two trains at once on one track. This is possible if one of the engines has the Odyssee speed control. I got them both started and everything was going fine until one of the trains ran through mislined switch and rear-ended a train standing in a siding. I had been doing some challenging manuvers the night before and had not set all the switches back to their normal configuration. I had forgotten this during one of my A.D.D. moments. So I have to re-rail everything, reset the power house, power up the track, start the first train and start the second train. Later, I decided to demonstrate my new Gantry Crane. I have mine set up to move metal objects from a gondola car to an open bed truck. I thought I had this down, but I could not get the metal objects into the truck, I ended up dropping them on the ground scenary of the layout. After that, I tried to move the train that had gotten rear-ended out of the siding on to the main, it derailed. I went throught the whole sequence again to get everything back running. Finally, the circuit breaker on the power house opened up for no apparent reason.

Most of my operating sessions go pretty well despite an occasional A.D.D. moment, but let a guest into the train room and things start to go wrong. I must look like Gomez Addams to my guests. Oh well, does anbody else have these problems?

Thanks,

George

[wrmcclellan]

George,

We have all been there. Great story and Murphy's Law to the max.

Regards,
Roy

[rlplionel]

The train operator's addage goes something like this. If things are going to go wrong, it will be during an operating session where people are watching. [;)]

Robert
http://home.surewest.net/rlplionel/Robert.htm

[hugoroundhouse]

I think the formula goes something like this :

Number of wrecks = (Number of on-lookers) X (Amount of bragging you've done about how cool this next move is) X (Cost of loco suffering the direct hit)

Yep, we've all been there.

Jim

[Anonymous]

My maternal grandmother's last name was Murphy. Nuff said!

Tony

[jonadel]

I've gotten so paranoid about people coming over that I rehearse the day before what I'm going to do, how anal is that? We had our best friends stop for dinner on there way to Florida and I'll bet I spent two hours the day before getting the right trains in the right places so as not to look the fool. It worked and I actually had fun. I also point out the red button on my DCS remote E-stop, a good button to use when distracted. I'm also at the point after about 5 minutes of running 5-6 trains to turn all the engine sounds down so we can talk, plus the smoke gets shut off. Good options.

Jon

[cnw1995]

With my last name, I can add some corollaries.
- There is a direct ratio between number of visitors and the distance away from the operator that items will derail.
- Items that never experienced electrical difficulties will short out.
- Unexplicable shorts will disable the entire layout.
- The power to the house will go out as soon as everyone gathers in the basement.
[:D]

[philo426]

Sorry Man it was just too bad that the train Gremlins struck at the worst possible time.I too have had situations were everything ran fine the day before(when I was by myself)but when company comes over and you try to demonstrate your trains things go wrong.It could be in your effort to impress your guests you engaged in overly complex maneuvers that resulted in the collision.

[Anonymous]

Murphy was an optimist?

[Anonymous]

Who was Gomez Addams? You guys are always talking aobut him, but I don't know who he is.

[rlplionel]

Read all about Gomez Addams and his hobbies here:

http://www.tvacres.com/char_addams_gomez.htm

Robert
http://home.surewest.net/rlplionel/Robert.htm