Here's one for you to think about: What are some of the most annoying things you've ever had happen to you when model railroading?
In case, one of those to me has to be a general case of clumbsiness: knife slippage. And I, unfortunatey, do not mean on the models. I'll let you use your imagination as to what I mean.
Glueing something together and then realizing you have it all completely reversed.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
rrinker Glueing something together and then realizing you have it all completely reversed. --Randy
Yeah, that's a real bummer. Had my own experience of that kind erecting the Branchline Woodward Station kit this past spring. Got to applying the outer walls that define the windows when nothing seemed to fit right. Contacted the manufacturer to suggest either their instructions were wrong or their dye-cutting was reversed. Got a nice note back saying they'd muffed the dye-cutting and he would send me the correct cuttings. Trouble is, I'd already stuck some of the wrong ones in place thinking to myself, "It has to be me...it'll all work out."
In my case, it is still trackwork. I have laid hundreds of feet of flex, but I still have some trouble with superelevation. I don't get it quite right, and although it may work when I test several choice locos, one of them will defy me after I have ballasted and go to have fun with my carefully proven curves. I end up having to soften the ballast, press or lift someplace, wait until it dries, and then try again. I have had to fiddle for two and three days until I get it right.
Mind you, it's definitely worth all that hassle.
If I were scrupulously honest, I'd have to admit to some measuring errors, or maybe a cutting error or four. Don't know how I goof that way, but it happens to me more than I'd like.
-Crandell
Gotta ditto Randy's. That happened to me a few months ago on a Accurail hopper. Thankfully, the adhesive hadn't set up yet so I was able to pull the frame loose from the shell and reverse it without marring either.
Tom
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
I like to have a train puttin around the layout as I work on it. So sometimes (being a bonehead) I may try and use the track gauge or lay a tool across the rails bringing things to a halt. The worst one was when I went to move a forty car cut with my hand to get it away from the area I was working on. I didn't look to see where the other end was and pushed it through a closed switch. One Atlas 33000 Gal tank car went to the floor breaking the coupler. It needed Kadee's anyway.
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
Breathing on your layout when the ground foam and ballast is not glued down yet.
-Khang Lu, University of Minnesota Railroad Club
Alan Jones in Sunny Queensland (Oz)
This is a good one!
I openly admit to being an absolute klutz.
2 things come to mind.
Dropping tiny parts like Detail Associate horns when I put them together...I do projects like that in a carpeted room. The other is using CA...in many cases using a little too much and glueing something to my finger or trying to wipe away excess with a paper towel and glueing the towel to my fingers or the project.
Mark H
Modeling in HO...Reading and Conrail together in an alternate history.
Forgeting to use a resistor when testing an LED, especially after the LED has been installed!
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
Several over the years but,one does stick out.
Dumping a full bottle of Polly S grimy black on my work desk,work mat,model and of course me.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Airbrush paint project:
Being in an excited rush........not peforming a spray test on a piece of scrap plastic or paper first......... and, instead, spraying the shell I worked so hard on for hours and seeing the airbrush spit splotches of paint on it! Not a good feeling, lol
"I like my Pullman Standards & Budds in Stainless Steel flavors, thank you!"
My first unique approach was buliding the 1x4 layout frame (not symetrical regarding joist spacing) on the garage foor as viewed from top and adding the legs there. That makes the legs upside down. Fortunately the legs could be removed and then reinstalled after flipping the frame over. A good argument for "this side up" labels.
A runner up was where I chose to locate some added turnouts for a small 3-track yard on a mainline turnout where I just had that turnout installed, with plans to extend it later. I decided the small yard would be a nice addition (rather than a single track) and simply added the track and two new turnouts. THEN I discovered I had placed one of the turnouts over a lower mainline reversing loop arc, making it impossible to add a Tortoise below the throwbar. I was able to (barely) install a remote Tortoise actuator (the Circuitron kit) but with considerable difficulty with the limited clearance, trackage fence, etc below.
Another one comes to mind. After 2-3 years of contemplating moving ahead and playing with XTrackCAD designs, I decided to seriously propose building a 5'x10' HO layout in the upstairs office / gameroom area and received approval. After the fact, I was advised "it's really big". Thus the mistake was not making a larger L-shaped layout, which would have been judged "really big".
I will try to remember to update this with any next bonehead move, having more than ample time for same before year end!
Paul
Modeling HO with a transition era UP bent
Issues with CA I think are nothing new. I have done that more times then I care to admit.
As to my original post, sometimes super glue or CA comes in handy for more things than just glueing models together.
Seeing the comment about the tank car on the floor reminded me of something that happened to me with a caboose. Someone else was at the power controls and unfortunately they backed a train off the edge of the layout and downloaded the caboose to the floor. Thankfully the only damage was easily repairable: displaced ladder, coupler and coupler clip. But I has always remembered that incident as well.
Mine happened when building a freight station in HO using O plans. All went well until I forgot and cut the door openings to the O scale dimensions.
I had a couple of doozies.
1. I was trying to stir a jar of Floquil caboose red. Could not get it mixed by hand so I took a paper clip, straightened it and chucked it into my Dremel. You guessed it, caboose red everywhere.
2. Couldn't get my jar of rail brown open. Tried regular pliers and nothing. I grabbed my vise grips, clamped them on and cranked. Broke the whole neck of the jar and sliced open the top of my hand.
3. Story after I got married, I was working on the layout, the power was on and my wedding ring touched both rails. White gold is an excellent conductor of both heat and electricity. Ouch!
Modeling the Pennsylvania Railroad in N Scale.
www.prr-nscale.blogspot.com
Besides knocking over about 5 full bottles of liquid cement on my work desk (twice on my models) when I did my track plan I didn't really think out the roads of the town, there's going to be a lot more gravel than pavement!!
Mine doesn't move.......it's at the station!!!
I'm some what embarassed to tell this.
My wife and righteously so recently got on my case about cleaning up my work bench and train area. I had a lot of stuff stored here and there in a lot of clear plastic boxes. In cleaning up the area I consolidated a lot of stuff and sorted out a lot to be discarded. There was a lot of non train related stuff that went in the trash as well.
A week after the big clean up I went to get a tool from the box where I kept all of the small tools and the box was no where to be found.
I can't begin to list the tools lost but estimate $200's worth.
Bob
Don't Ever Give Up
You mean like the day you discover that no matter how chilly you feel, wearing your sweater while reaching into your layout is NOT a good thing? You can usually get in OK; but backing out again, usually with something in your hand, changes your trajectory, and subsequently, substantially changes your layout. Sometimes you get a brief newsflash that you're about to do that, and you execute the 'jerk', a strange little spasm which has no effect, except now to give momentum to your action...
Friends, thanks so much for these. I'm looking forward to experiencing the few that are not yet part of my repertoire. Many of mine come under the "If it ain't broke, you're not trying" heading, also known as "Get a bigger hammer," as for instance when my glue-mix pump sprayer dries out a little and I decide that a bit more pressure on the pull stroke will loosen things up. And it does. A lot. All at once. Similarly, slipping on a rail joiner, or better yet, actually joining two tight-fitting pieces of rail with pre-loaded joiners on one: it's a thrill when that stretch of rail comes ripping up out of the ties, isn't it? Or when the joiner is suddenly nowhere to be seen and turns up about an eighth of an inch into your forefinger. Or when the pliers slip, leaving rail and joiner behind, and penetrate the side wall of your recently completed (fill in name of structure kit). Good times.
WHen I started rebuilding the Greenvale section of my layout, I had to do a partial rebuild of the downgrade track. I thought I had a good transition from level to grade, but when I did a test run, the locomotive high centered on the transition. Naturally, this was after I had ballasted the track. I had to pull up a couple of sections of flex, and get out the Surform file to file a more gentle transition (I could not access the track supports under the layout because of the way teh old layout section met up with the new). I relaid the track, and the transition ran OK, but now I had a kink in the curve when the old and new flex meet. So then I had to remove more ballast, push the kink back in line, pin it down, solder the joint, and re-ballast the track. All this work messed up some of the scenery, so that had to be fixed as well.
Like everyone else that uses CA, I do not know how many times I have glued my fingers together or glued my fingers to something else. I keep a can of acetone in my spray booth because it is the solvent for the bottles of Accupaint that I have left. Soemtimes even that does not work, then it is a question of which finger is going to lose a layer of skin when I pull things apart.
George In Midcoast Maine, 'bout halfway up the Rockland branch
The topic isn't BIGGEST mistakes made while model railroading, but MOST ANNOYING. Those are not necessarily the same thing.
Buying the same thing three times because you knew you needed it but forgot you already bought it is something I have done more than once, I am ashamed to say, and it is very annoying. I have done this with more than one expensive Walthers kit.
Mistaking a kit part for a sprue, and thus destroying it, is annoying.
I know I have done some annoying things during operating sessions, but mostly they annoy others.
Leaving the cap off a brand new bottle of solvent based plastic cement, and thus having it virtually all be evaporated by the time I noticed, is annoying.
Seeing something rare and affordable at a train show that I really really want, and deciding it is so rare that surely nobody else on earth will want it so I can come back later for it -- with predictable consequences -- is annoying.
Dave Nelson
FRRYKid... What are some of the most annoying things you've ever had happen to you when model railroading?
Neglecting to change into a ragged shirt before I do any type of painting, especially touch-up/detail painting. I think "This will only take a minute or two", then get distracted and reach for something on the back of the workbench. Then I acquire a nice little ring of Roof Brown on the sleeve of a brand-new shirt, from that open jar of Polly Scale that was close to the front edge...
-Ken in Maryland (B&O modeler, former CSX modeler)
Biggest has got to be stapling my hand to the underside of the layout (yeah, it HURTS).
Most annoying is probablya tie between gluing something on your layout and either clamping, bracing, or holding it for what you think is long enough for the adhesive to cure, only to watch it slowly topple over as soon as the restraint is removed; and damaging your own layout thru sheer klutziness -- and double points if youdo it within 30 minutes of cautioning someone else.
Connecticut Valley Railroad A Branch of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford
"If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." -- Henry Ford
As to the grumble about the biggest mistakes vs most annoying mistakes, sometimes they are the same thing. Of course, then there are those mistakes that lead to permanent reminders of them. Of course that references my original post again.
BRAKIE Several over the years but,one does stick out. Dumping a full bottle of Polly S grimy black on my work desk,work mat,model and of course me.
SP&S modeler, 1960's give or take a decade or two for some equipment.
http://www.youtube.com/user/SGTDUPREY?feature=guide
Gary DuPrey
N scale model railroader
There have been so many it is hard to choose. Just yesterday I was doing some switching using a bamboo skewer as an uncoupling tool. I was holding the pointed end in the palm of my hand when I leaned forward to switch a ground throw. The butt end of the skewer hit the fascia driving the pointed end fairly deep into the heel of my hand. I didn't cry. OK, maybe a little.
Note to self: hold the skewer by the butt end.