Funniest MRR Goof Up?

[Anonymous]

Let's laugh at ourselves a bit here - tell us some of your biggest layout building errors, including really dumb things.

I think my worst - among many - is spilling paint on the layout room carpet, and scubbing so hard and fast to get it out that I tore a ligament in my finger.

A close second includes soldering below the layout, and sitting directly below the solder joint, allowing some to drip right into my lap......

In the operating department, I once inadvertantly turned the throttle upside down, so as I was gliding into my stub end passenger terminal, when I thought I was cutting power, I really revved it up to full throttle, tossing the loco over the end of the layout when it hit the bumper. The oympic judges did give the F-7 a 9.3 on its half gainer swan dive.....

And you?

[Anonymous]

hey jeff, you made some of the same mistakes (but a little different)
I also just did an upside down controller. Though I was controlling two helpers on the back of a manifest. The lead loco derailed on a misthrown switch which derailed the first couple of cars. Went to stop the helpers but ended up putting them full throttle, pushing the first few cars onto the basement floor.

Onto my paint mishap. I had a can of paint beneath the layout. I accendently kicked it spilled it all over the floor. But it gets worse, i didn't notice i did this and ended up stepping in the paint and tracking it all around the layout.

The only damage was a couple of couplers broke and sky blue shoe prints on old carpet and a pairof shoes that are now used for mowing. no big loss in the grand scheme of things.
Andrew

[Javern]

ahhhh way back when i was painting my foam havin a good ol time and took a break and when i came back the foam was looking something like the grand canyon in places, turns out i was using some paint that ate foam. Would have been ok if I had happened to be modeling a lunar landscape. Live and learn, went back to Lowes and bought a new sheet of foam.

[johncolley]

Having the skills and ability to do things doesn't always mean we should do them. For example, I built a great operating layout with yard and service on the lower level and a nice switching town on the upper, connected by a neat 24"radius helix with a curved set of trestles at the top like the Keddie wye only one wood, the other steel. It was great EXCEPT you had to be a contortionist to get in and out of the room due to the helix and duckunder for the trestles. Well, shoot, tear out time! I'm getting too old and stiff for the contortions, as are all my visiting friends.

[BNSFNUT]

I glued a freight car to the rails once.
I did a quick repair job on broken detail without removing it from the rails. I must have got some of the CA that I used on the rails.
Oh well it need new wheels anyway[sigh]

[jfugate]

My friend brought over his new brass SP business cars and we ran them around the Siskiyou Line a bit. When they were crossing one section of open track (no turnouts) with no scenery yet, one of the business cars decided to jump the track.

Fortunately my friend was right there ... I never saw anyone move so fast in my entire life. He was not about to let one of those new brass cars turn into scrap metal on the concrete room floor! He caught it before any damage was done ... boy what a relief!

Checked the track and found one of the rail joints was a bit rough so I smoothed it with a file ... still, in a couple years of operation the first car to jump the track at that location had to be *a visitors new brass pride and joy*.

Sheesh!

[wa1lbk]

I can recall a couple of incidents years ago at an O scale (2-rail DC) club layout (now dismantled), the South Shore Society of Model engineers in Brockton MA. Remember the scene in "Magic of Model Railroading" where a computer glitch causes all the throttles on the layout to lock wide open (even when the main power is turned off!), causing wild runaways? Something very similar happened to me while testing out a then-new Overland Models brass PRR EMD E-8 (with the trainphone antenna detail), just custom-painted in the PRR tuscan 5-stripe passenger scheme. Although I intended to run the E8 primarily in passenger service, I'm a bit of a "tonnage freak" & wanted to see how well it would do on a heavy freight train. I coupled it onto something like a 15 car freight train; it was handling the grades on our layout without any problem, running very smoothly & quietly. As it topped out on a curve over the worst of the grade, it started to pick up speed; accordingly , I turned back the throttle rheostat (UNLIKE the state-or-the-art electonics in club layout in the movie, the SSSME layout wiring would best be described as "Neanderthal"! - Lots of WWII - era surplus telphone relays, massive rheostats, etc). The E8 didn't slow down; instead it continued to accelerate, thundering upgrade towards a 180-degree, 4-ft. radius turn. I clicked my direction control DPDT toggle switch to the center "OFF" position, which should have brought the train to a screeching halt - but it DIDN't! [:O] (There was @ a 4-foot drop to the concrete floor on the outside of that curve! [xx(] ). In desperation, I slammed all the main AC circuit breakers on the mainline control panel I was running to the "OFF" position - with EXACTLY the same effect as in the movie, a still - uncontrollable runaway! [:(] The E8 whipped around the curve but stayed on the rails; fortunately, the mainline ran litterally right behind me at the point, so I physically grabbed the engine at that point, before the train could start downgrade! [:)] The cause of this "electrically impossible" runaway? A newbie member [8] was running a switch engine on a branch line which adjoined the mainline trackage; he ran his switcher down to the point where the loco bridged the gap between the mainline turnout & the branchline yard track; when it quit running, he turned up his (SEPARATELY POWERED) throttle all the way! [D)] (The juice fed through the stalled switcher into the mailine rails! [banghead]
In a totally separate incident, I recall the caboose on a longer-than-usual freight derailing as the train headed into a curve; (it caught on the frog of a trailing-point turnout). The train came to a sudden halt; then, in slow motion, ALL the freight cars flopped on their sides, one-by-one, like a row of dominoes! [(-D]

[willy6]

I was sitting at my hobby desk getting ready to install grab irons on my locomotive and reached up to the parts drawer and dropped the liitle drawer on the carpet. So I got up and went outside to the shed to get some masking tape to pick up the grab irons off the carpet. While I was in the shed I decided to have a beer.As I went back in the house after drinking a cold one I heard the vacuum cleaner running. My wife had just past my hobby desk. I stopped her and said "didn't you see any shiny little objects near my desk"? she replied "yes, Isee crap around your desk all the time". Needless to say It ended up to be a 70 mile round trip to the LHS getting new grab irons.

[Anonymous]

Ouch!! But on the other hand, better grab irons than say a couple dozen lost wax brass castings lol.

[cjcrescent]

I have been real fortunate in that I haven't had problems like this yet, (I do, however, believe in O'Toole's corollary on Murphy's Law), but it does remind me of a cartoon in an old Model Railroader. A guy had a brass Cab-forward go thru an open bridge and all you see is a crumpled mass of brass, several cars trailing up the layout side to the track and the guy standing over the model with a gun about to put it out of its misery.

[Anonymous]

Not too long ago I was soldering track, doing a superb job. But I was thirsty. So I set the soldering iron down. On the foam layout board. It melted all the way through and fell to the floor. So I picked it up...

At the wrong end [B)]

[lonewoof]

I ran my brand-new Hobbytown Alco road switcher for a couple of hours, then decided to give it a complete tear-down & re-lube. Took the trucks apart and decided to wash off all the gears with kerosene. Left the 6 sets of drivers, with their helical gears, soaking in kero. Forgot about them for about a week. When I dredged them out, the plastic insulating bushings had a consistency about like used bubble gum. Luckily there were replacements available (for a price!)
/Lone

[sparkingbolt]

Recently decided to make an SD40 out of Athearn's SD40P. This required shortening the long hood, removing the steam generator section which in turn required using a SD dash2 truck. That meant a very time consuming bolster and frame modification. All done, went to run it, the two trucks pull in different directions! Dan

[twhite]

Put in Yuba Pass tunnel, spent hours, days, weeks, years, millenium doing the scenery to a 'T'. So proud of it. Took pictures, showed it to friends. Everyone said WOW, WHAT A SPECTACULAR PASS TUNNEL! Was SO proud. Forgot to run my Yellowstone to test it. Right--tunnel's on a curve. Overhang on Yellowstone stopped the train cold, hard to move when one of your cross-compound air pumps is kissing the tunnel face.

[Anonymous]

My experience wasn't very funny to me at the time. Our club was participating in a regional model railroad convention in a city about 125 miles from ours. We rented a truck to pick up our HO scale modules and gear and take them to the show.

At the time my garage was temporarily changed around due to storing some furniture for my son. I was the keeper of the module corners, simple two-track quarter circles that I used to store under my workbench in the garage. When we got to the show site, I was asked where were the corners - I had compeletly forgotten them because they were out of sight!

Luckily for me that at the time my car had a rear seat that would fold down, as I drove home to retrieve the corners knowing they would fit into my trunk and back seat. I'll confess that was a speedy trip - I'm just glad there weren't any speed traps on the way.

Of course I'll never live it down, as the guys bring it up once in a while when someone else forgets something. At least they had a laugh!

Bob Boudreau

[Anonymous]

Several years ago I belonged to a small club that had a 20x30foot layout in the basement of a tv repair shop. One of the peninsulas had a wide sweeping curve at the end of it. I managed to bump into a string of covered hoppers parked on the curve. Hello cement! Thereafter that stretch of track was referred to as "Ed man's curve".

Cheers,

Ed

[cwclark]

I knocked over a bottle of CA glue into the gears of a brand new AC4400..so i order the new parts from Athearn...the new parts? they cost 5 bucks less than the entire locomotive...geez!..and i thought i was gonna fix it!...but beats that guy that glued his teeth together with CA glue when he pulled the stopper out of the bottle with his mouth....at least my AC4400 didn't need medical attention!

[AntonioFP45]

I think I was about 12 years old.

I had a short HO scale brass track piece with an Altas bumper that had a little light bulb in it. I decided to try to make it light up as my layout was not assembled. I tied two wires to it, one on each rail. I then proceeded to stick the wires into a 110V wall outlet..........................POW!!!!!!!!! [:0] Bulb and the plastic surrounding it WERE MELTED like burnt corn fritters as if hit by lightning! What a smell! I'm thankful I wasn't "fried!"

Next step.......I think I then went to the bathroom!

[Anonymous]

A while back I was putting together a few boxcar kits. Well anyway I was sitting in my reclining computer chair putting together the cars at the work table when the phone rang. I got up to answer it & after I hung up I went back to my chair & sat down....................GUESS where I set one of the cars down at. OOH Yeah! There's nothing like a smashed 50' boxcar under ones rump! This one will go to the RIP track on the layout with an out of service tag on it! No scrap yard built yet so there she'll sit. I think it's called ........" Scenery " "Static Display " or what ever you want to call it.

[Anonymous]

Ken,

Does that mean your box car was rear ended? I know - stupid, but too good to pass up!

P.S. Please don't ask me how many time I've done something similar!!!

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by dkelly

Ken,

Does that mean your box car was rear ended? I know - stupid, but too good to pass up!

P.S. Please don't ask me how many time I've done something similar!!!

Ah ha ha, That's a good one! Even my friends sitting here reading this with me liked what you came up with, PS; I'll never hear the end of this one now! Thanks Alot! "HAPPY RAILS" PPS; It could have been worse, It could have been a crane instead! "OUCH"

[trainfan1221]

Aah, where to start? Well for one, there was the Athearn SD9 that had so many coats of paint that the detailing was all gone...Then there was another time when I put a motor back in the chassis the wrong way. Great if you like head on collisions.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by trainfan1221

Aah, where to start? Well for one, there was the Athearn SD9 that had so many coats of paint that the detailing was all gone...Then there was another time when I put a motor back in the chassis the wrong way. Great if you like head on collisions.

I have a loco with BOTH problems! [xx(] The paint on the back of my Spectrum 70 ton switcher is so thick no detail shows through, and while doing some maintenance I installed one of the motors backwards (it's a dual motor loco, odd for something so puny!) so it tried to go forward and backward simultaneously [:0]

[robengland]

I built my own power supply to power the Digitrax Zephyr. The only 15V AC transformer I could find had some spare windings on it so i made a 12V DC supply too.

Everything worked fine until I bought an IR90 infrared receiver, plugged it into Loconet and then connected it to the 12V DC supply. Didn't work. I'm busy checking connections when a funny hot smell and buzzing starts coming out of the Zephyr. Talk about a "Smoke test". Quickly disconnected everything. Took me a while to figure out I've got the windings feeding the 15V AC and 12V DC connected together and no common ground, so I've just applied about 30V across some internal componet of the Zephyr.

carefully reconnected the Zephyr without the IR90 and tested it. Seemed to drive a loco fine and I was just relaxing when I tried to program a CV. Pressing the "3" key produced a "6" and similar odd re-purposing of the keys - seriously screwed. Next day no better.

So I order another Zephyr. Weeks later while waiting for the new one, I got the old one out to show a friend. Works like a dream. It has had a wee rest and it's happy again.

I kept the new Zephyr. Damned if I'm resting the whole railroad for another 6 weeks next time I blow a Zephyr up (and I just know I will somehow....)

NB that's the beauty of the Zephyr. Does everything I need for DCC but cheap enough I can carry a spare of such a key item. I'll use it as a throttle in a yard soon...

[Anonymous]

i was running my BRAND NEW engine and i ran it so long the body started to warp

[dano99a]

I found out what 120 volts feels like for a second. Trying to figure out why the lights in my buildings weren't getting any power (I use a "BELL SYSTEM, UNREGULATED POWER SUPPLY" connected to a rio). NOT THINKING, I touched the wrong post (the "input")

Had a friend next to me who slapped the screwdriver out of my hand to cut it off.

Turns out, only an Idiot like me wouldn't bother to look and see if it had a fuse going to the output.
No wonder those lights didn't work.

[:(]

[cmurray]

I make my own dry transfer lettering. I had just finished lettering a PFE reefer and sprayed on a coat of Testor's Dullcote to protect my work. Unfortunately, the inks in my transfers were soluble in the Dullcote and all my work ran down the sides of the car. I have since switched to an acrylic based overcoat.

[RedLeader]

Once I bought a can of spray paint, and somehow it didn't came with the spray thingy at the top. To avoid going back to the supply store, I decided to take the thing out of another bottle and place it to the new one. I first tried using my fingers to take it off, but it didn't work, then I used a pair of pliers and..... BOOOM!!! An aluminum colored volcano erupted at the middle of my Silver Creek Valley. Fortunately no loco or car was reached by the paint, but it took months to cover my stupidity from the layout. My face was silver for two days, after I had to cleaning it with thinner!! Since then, everytime I look at the roof, I'm reminded of the incident!

Another day, I was airbrushing a brand new car. Suddenly the airbrush got clugged and I inserted a toothpick while holding down the air valve... guess what.... BOOOM!!! ATSF Oxide Red face for a day.

[Anonymous]

Redleader,

Have done nearly the same things myself. Question: Right at the moment you inserted the toothpick while holding down the air valve did the tiny voice inside say "oh no" right before the spray? I wi***hat tiny voice inside me would speak up a little more timely. Would save me a bunch of embarrassment!!!!! Of course I wouldn't have as many funny stories to tell!

[Fergmiester]

There is a story I could tell but the censoring required would detract
Sorry[angel]