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What to do with a tired engine
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Hey All! <br /> Prepare yourselves for a long and dull story. Here we go: I have an Athearn Genesis SD70l that was a fairly expensive and nice model. I ran it around sometimes on the floor with my EZ track while I was building my benchwork, and it ran great. So one day it was sitting on a coffee table, a couple of feet off the wood floor and the cat pushed it over the edge. I needed to put some detail parts back on, but it took the fall well and still ran beautifully. So when the bechwork was completed and track layed down, I took the engine for the first run. Everything was going well until disaster struck and the engine hit the only rail out of alignment. Of course, this happened to be in a place where the track was only an inch away from the edge of the table and down it went again. This fall was well over 4 ft. and again onto a wood floor. Now the engine is not fit to be seen on a half-decent layout. A few peices snapped off and were lost, and the small rear lights ripped free of their wires so no more light back there. The worst damage came to the front axle, where the engine landed. It is bent. Now when the engine starts rolling it sounds like: whum . . . . . whum . . . . whum . . . whum . .whum . whum whumwhumwhumwhum, and the if you look at the engine coming straight at you, you can see it's shaking slightly. It also derails fairly easily on my 18" radius curves. I bent the axle back into position and that cured the shaking but not the whuming or derailing. No doubt, I have definitely learned from my experiences. I'm not that confident or skilled to replace the axle or anything that hard. If you think there is an easier fix please post. What my real question is what to do now? I think trashing it is a waste. I don't think I could get any money for it anywhere, but if you know people who would go for something like this post it here. Should I take it to the engine repairman in town? I really don't want to put any more money into this loco, but if you have had very good experiences with someone like that for reasonable prices, please speak up. Now our LHS is now selling those exact engines for half price, and a new one would be better. I am going to buy some higher radius curves and test the engine to see if it still derails. If it doesn't derail, maybe I can use it on my next layout whenever I need another engine(while I'm alone). It could also be a experiment loco that I use to practice weathering, DCC intallation, etc, etc. Which option should I choose? Or, if you have a better option please say. <br /> <br />Thank you. I feel better already. I hope you aren't too bored. I'll shut up now.[B)]
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