Plowing around that vicinity is probably rather infrequent, if ever. At most they might need to sweep out a few switch points. Need to head further east, past my area, or see a really heavy winter.
I've lost a few cars / trucks couplers / stirrups / details to bad design which allowed falling to a carpet or such. On the "Grey and Grandure", (first version): This one was the worst because the cars can't be replaced: Three fell through the opening hitting blue foam. Maybe I lost one truck set. Since then I have learned to make sure I have at least an inch between the track and the edge of table and no openings like above.
I've posted about these experiences before, but the ones that come to mind: 1. When I was in Jr. High, I had just completed assembling some Con-Cor HO ATSF Fuel Foiler kits (a little more involved than an Athearn Blue-Box kit but not by much) and watched a visiting child (maybe 3-4 y.o.?) grab the caboose and stringline the entire train of Fuel Foilers onto the floor. Most were returned to kit form....a TON of broken parts including almost all of the articulated joints which rendered them useless. That one hurt. 2. Having two mirrored hard drives fail within 3 days of each other, and in the process losing a LOT of railfanning photos. (and personal/family photos, too) After a LOT of hours and trying various tools and some bit of luck I was able to recover most of the data, but it was a harrowing experience. 3. Launching an F59PHI into the atmosphere, and it wedged itself behind the layout, and *behind* a piece of backdrop material that was being stored under the layout, itself wedged in pretty good. Took me forever to get that thing out of there, and how it managed to get there in the first place is still a one-in-million longshot.
Flash and Ken, not much plowing around here . BN does/ did have an older rotary plow they keep on the old GN siding in Sandpoint . I will look and see if they still stage it here next time we go to town for supplies and such ... and if so I will post some pics to the UP ready track. Actually we do not get more than 5-7 feet total during a normal year , BoxCab proably sees more snow than we do Paul
After building and flying model airplanes for 30 years now, one would think model railroading would be rather safe from the occasional crash. Not so. Years ago at a train show I was unloading my long train boxes from the Pontiac Grand Am 4-door that I owned at the time. Consistent with central Illinois, the wind was blowing a good 20-25 knots. The first three of four boxes successfully made it from rear seat to small hand cart without incident. The forth and final box held the motive power. Part way between the motion of removing said box from seat with the destination being the hand cart, a strong Illinois gust caught the cars door, slammed into my shoulder, which caused me to loose said box. Adding insult to injury, the same gust caught the box, causing the flap to open and turn into a massive "air brake" or flight surface akin to an aircraft. In slow motion I watched Kato SD70's, Atlas SD60M's, GP40-2's and Life Like GP20's fall to the parking lot. I don't think one locomotive had hit the parking lot before my list of cuss words hit the air. None of my custom painted locomotives were in that case but the GP20's never got repaired. Years ago when I still had the O scale layout, I had just installed Lionel's version of DCC. I tested it with a toy train with a value akin to $10.00 first before giving the real show using my newly acquired MTH B&M GP7 in maroon and gold. The back straight on the layout was 16 feet long IIRC. Around the second time on this back stretch something went wrong and the train hit warp speed, heading to the only end without carpet. In a swell of panic I hit every button except the voltage cut off and watched the GP7 become a real Yankee Flyer. No real damage but the cuss words came out anyway. And finally and more recent. Was finishing an Alco for someone here on Trainboard. It was a Thursday night and installing the rear number board into the Atlas GP35 was one of the last things to do to call this project done. The Clear part was carefully picked up with my tweezers like I had done millions of times, then as I was within millimeters of the shell, twang! In the spirit of Gene Shepard, "For a moment I could see the small, clear part contrast sharply to the dull light and ceiling of the work shop, before reaching apogee and vanishing into a sea of random pattern dull tan carpet. Oh F-U-D-G-E-! Except I didn't say fudge, I said the mother of all cuss words, the F . . . . word." I spent more time looking for that dang number board that I did to work on the original project. After day three, I resigned myself to the fact that I would just have to do another one. Where that part went is unknown, but it is believed to reside with Jimmy Hoffa and DB Cooper. I even looked when I moved out and there was no sign of it. Got to love this hobby!
Thankfully, my first disaster years ago was my only real disaster. My N scale mentor and best friend and I just finished the framework for a large garage sized layout, and we were careful not to use a lot of defective Atlas snap switches (since improved - anyone remember them?) but we had a very sophisticated track plan and even engineering drawings as it was multigrade. So, we opted for Minitrix, Lifelike and Bachman switches which we thought and it was proven to be extremely consistent and reliable. Hobby shops carried the Atlas and Peco switches only, so we had to rely on Toys R Us and other toy shops in the area. During the planning stage we cleaned the area dry in three counties - Dade (Miami), Broward (Ft Lauderdale) and Palm Beach of all N scale switches. But we thought we had enough. We didn't. We were one short, and we wanted to get trains running so we compromised and used one Atlas snap switch on a straight line on a level grade which actually took the longest to install because we exercised extra caution. It worked for awhile, and a month later, I just bought a new ConCor Kato Hudson streamlined in Pennsylvania Green livery, which became my favorite for the time, but I knew it was pure fantasy. I brought it home and put it on the layout. When it hit the Atlas switch, the defective frog finally chose this time to give out, and launched my brand new steamer to the concrete floor 4' below, resounding with that sickening thud and sounds of tiny parts rollling all over the floor. I was devastated, and took it back to the hobby shop I originally bought it. He took it to his repair man and basically installed my shells on a store inventoried mechanism and told me he would have ConCor exchange it and he would return that unit to store stock, That was one of the best acts I can remember being done by a LHS owner. From that point on, I swore never to use those old Atlas switches in the yellow envelopes, always border my layouts with a protective border on curves or switch junctions and never had a disaster since. I still have that Hudson and periodically use it to run my Broadway Limited passenger set even to today. During the construction of the basework of my present layout to test track, and before the guardrail was installed, I tested my track with expendable Bachmann oldies even though now I have a carpeted floor. Ken "FloridaBoy" Willaman
Teased a cat with model trains once. Only once. The layout wound up smelling, well, like ammonia only worse. It was fun watching the cat stalk the unmoving train, then run like lightning when I powered it up. The cat, however, had the last laugh. And it probably was pretty funny watching me try to pull up the track without breathing...
My disaster happened a few years ago, but is still fresh in my memory. I fell asleep on the couch in my basement one evening, next to my layout. I suddenly awoke to a crashing sound and found a wall shelf containing all my cars had detatched from the wall and dumped everything on the floor. I spent many an hour replacing microtrain couplers...
