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I spent the last 3 nights reviving my old layout, engines and rolling stock after a 5 yr. hiatus. Originally inspired by the magnificent "Calico & Western", my 2'X4' bent dogbone layout includes reasonable likenesses of Mt. Whitney, the Alabama Hills and Red Rock State park, as well as a logging camp and a mining town. It has lots of running features, too, like staging under the mountain, a turntable, two sidings (one doubles as a run around), and the ability to have long runs in either direction as well as three trains running at once (it gets a little busy!). My Bachman N-Scale 4-4-0 Americans were running very poorly at first, but after taking them apart and cleaning off years of grunge, my Ol' 119 ran great! The Jupiter had a fried truck spring under the tender and it fell to pieces. Just try to find a replacement! Bachmann won't even talk about parts, and my local hobby shop sold me some Kadee coupling springs that were far too small. Time to get creative! I took some standard Radio Shack speaker wire, split it, stripped off the insulation of one wire bundle (the brass-colored one), cut off about 1 1/2 inches of a single tiny strand and then wrapped it tightly around the same screwdriver I used to remove the truck. I then compressed my new spring between my thumb and forefinger......instant conducting truck spring, just the right amount of tension, too! I made two so the truck would balance from side to side, then put it all back together. I finished cleaning and lubing the loco and tender. It now runs great, better than new. It's out-running Ol' 119, and I'm thinking about replacing all the springs that way. It sounds complicated, but it only took seconds, once I got the idea. I've got plenty left to do though. I've got a steam loco sound module to wire, a table to build, couplers to install, and I don't even know what DCC is! The hobby's changed a lot in 5 years.
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