I cannot remember what thread it was in but I asked sd90ns the same thing. Theres a fairly substantial town in front of that closet door now. Theres a pic in his railimages. So far I've found that the Track Gods will not suffer a fool who thinks the entire train will negotiate a non-tuned Kato #4. Just because the expensive locos don't pick the switch points doesn't mean the cheap plastic wheels on the hopper second to last from the rear end won't.
Speaking of track gods, I had a open house a couple of years ago. I was open for four hours with nary a problem until 15 minutes before close. There were a few of us standing around talking while the local was running (making laps) on the layout as it had for the past three hours and 45 minutes. Next thing you hear is a crash as two engines and three freight cars decided to take a plunge to the floor 50+ inches below. The incident was at the west switch in Spadra (which is over the abyss) but when checking the gauge of the turnout everything was spot on. Same with the engines. To this day I haven't had a problem since.
BTW: Welcome to the 1,000+ Poster club here on TrainBoard!!!!!!! :tb-ooh: :tb-ooh: :tb-ooh: :tb-ooh:
Looks great. like the idea of giving the wind gods something to play with. Of course if they play too much the lightening gods will have something to play with as well. I hope they don't hit the decoders!
Just saw this thread....... And I have been visited many times by the coupler gods. In my case they are not happy until I remove the Kato Automatic couplers, and replace them with Micro-Trains couplers. They showed me this by taking a set of PA units with a passenger train and running at a show. After about half of a loop, the first decoupling took place on a section of straight track, then next decoupling happened about 2 feet later of the same piece of track. It ran a little longer and soon all of the locomotives were uncoupled. A friend of mine saw the same thing with his Kato SD70ACe locomotives. Converted to MT couplers and there has not been a decoupling since. The track gods must now own stock in MT. I have angered the track gods as well with intricate track arrangements using off the shelf parts. I guess they frown on the easy way. So my penance for this, is to now hand lay all of the turnouts and even the crossings. They have allowed me to use Micro Engineering Code 55 and Code 40 track. I guess that is because they are not that easy to work with, and the time and effort sacrifice on the turnouts squares things. I have angered the decoder gods, but I am not sure why. I was close to having all of my locomotives converted when a bunch of decoders, that had been working for years, died all of a sudden. It was like a re-enactment of the battle of Thermopylae. I had 300 decoders make the ultimate sacrifice to the gods. But I can also say that they have been happy with me from time to time. When I ran a ATSF refer trains with a few head end express cars behind a Hallmark 4-8-8, she pulled 80 cars with only one issue. One of the gremlins decided to bend down the pin on one of the refer couplers so it would snag on a turnout. Well it did and only caused a decoupling. Fixed the pin and never had an issue again. The train was a mix of IM and MT refers with a PRB caboose at the end. The track gods like it when you put big trains behind big steamers and cap it off with a nice heavy brass caboose. I am not sure, however, how they will respond when I place a decoder in the 4-8-4. But I also believe there are road name gods. When you have too many road names, and some of them keep being left in their jewel cases, they can vent their anger in many ways. I have yet to experience the exploding Accumate. But I have seen the exploding Kato, MT and even a Unimate that failed, so I know that time is near........
