well lets go to this thing at the pikemasters thats seasonal. at the pikemasters the temperatures are always opposite the outside weather, in the summer they run the AC upstairs at the auditorium and it stays cool down at the pm's. during the winter they fire up the buildings old steam boilers out back and heats the place up. usually every year we have issues with the track and equipment due to this heat. however this years its worse then normal. walked in today and about 30 minutes later dusty spotted a section of the mainline on track 3 that had risen about an inch off the cork with spikes hanging from it. about 20 minutes of respikeing and cutting rail, it was back to normal. we did a few more things to straighten some other kinks in the track that we laid in the summer. this was typical for track 3 and track 4 because of the base and how it used to be laid. we relayed this last summer so this was its first winter, expected with track not cut for winter expansion yet. however than a few trouble spots on t1/2 (usually our best performing tracks), this was fixed through the equipment, not the track. we simply turned a few cars around or relocated them in the train. easy fix but this was still unexpected. then another mess reared its ugly head. the heat had seriously messed up equipment. both my P2K GP9's axle gears expanded and cracked (older units). and it appears all other P2K units of older runs also now have cracked gears. my SD7 and phils SD7 had athearn gears in them already so they where safe. however the rest of everyone elses P2K's seem to now have issues. and what don't have gear issues now have growling issues. the heat has made units growl considerably more then normal (its really noticable now) and don't run as smooth as normal. some electrical problems with certain units where also experienced which we have ruled as to some metals in the power pickups expanding and no longer making full contact. we just spent the whole night trying to get stuff back up and running right again. we opened the one window thats accessible to let in the 20 degree weather from outside in and fired up like 3 fans. we also tried a few methods to get stuff running again, which we did successfully. hopefully this won't affect our open house this weekend.
