Drop a locomotive lately?


logandsawman said:
Carpeting can work wonders. A loco dropped from my suspended layout 7' to the carpeting, and there was NO damage!!! It must have hit just right.

I have a 3' x 3' piece of carpeting that I slide around in my layout room, to keep my feet off the cold tile floor. Just so happened that last night I wasn't planning on doing anything more than putting the loco on the track and OOPS.
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Yes, carpet is even better. The only downside is that it likes to eat tiny screws and other parts.
 
bnsf971 said:
He ended up leaving the club over the incident.
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At the museum running a red is pretty serious. Usual first time penalty is something like a single week operating suspension. Second time is more stern & greater penalty, etc. In our 7? years now, I only know of one person who was a chronic red light runner and was asked to not operate the trains anymore. He decided not to be a volunteer.
 
Just last weekend I had been working on what was possibly my worst running engine, trying to get it running better. And I had succeeded, too! I was much happier with it's performance. It was sitting on the layout with it's shell off in the ONE section where I don't have any kind of barrier up when it caught my sleeve and dropped 3 1/2 feet onto the concrete. My "this will be a two minute job to try this," turned into about two hours worth of work to find all the pieces, get it back together and running smoothly again.
 
It is NOT the fall that does the damage... It's the sudden stop against the floor/ground or some other immovable object that does the damage!
 
The only time I had such "accidents" was when I needed to go into hospital for three months and because it was the VA hospital and my income was disability. When in hospital you loss the disability and that was my lot rent. So, 5 of my brothers went and moved me out. My "toys" were on display in the living room and one brother got a plastic storage box and just swiped them off the shelf and into the box. And then the box was stored in a barn over the rest of the winter and spring. Not good for the electronics and many busted and moldy parts. I'm starting over again.
 
I have never dropped anything, but I have had things dropped. I was showing one of my steam locomotives off to a friend who didn't seem that interested in the hobby. Evidently he was interested enough to pick up the locomotive when I was out of the room, and he managed to drop it! For such a large drop onto concrete there was surprisingly little damage, but I did have to fix up the cowcatcher and some other detail parts.

I'm clumsy enough to where I will have certainly dropped - or knocked off - something myself one day.
 
I lost a boxcar that way. Out of about 8 cars I had assembled at the time. I was doing something and had the push pin pulled out that normally protects cars from rolling off the end of track. Most of my tracks are recessed far enough from the edge to prevent this issue.

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I shake a lot when I get excited and trains are always a source of excitement. Being Type 1 Diabetic too doesn't help - I knocked an N Scale SD70MAC out of my train cabinet the other evening. Thankfully, it's a Kato model and sustained no damage at all.

Once though, when I was 15 years old I accidentally sat on a plastic Kato P42 shell. Amazingly enough, the only damage was the rear steps snapping off, and a bit of glue fixed that. It still makes me laugh when I remember how silly I was!!

Mitch
 
beiland said:
FAKE BRIDGES
Several of my bridges were not really bridges in the truest sense,.... they didn't have their bottom structures.

One of these dbl track bridges was set up as a safety device,....that one against the backside of the layout right at the point of the crossover switching between the 2 mainlines. I had in the past experienced several of my nice steam engines derailing and crashing off the layout onto the concrete floor...NOT a pleasant experience!! I decided I was going to put up this bridge structure to prevent any derailed loco from experiencing that fall off the side. Strange as it might seem, after I put this 'guard-rail bridge' into place. I hardly ever experienced any other derailments ??
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One particular incident I remember vividly is the time when I had just received my brand new Broadway Limited Y6B, and run it around the layout a few times that afternoon. I was thrilled with that engine and its sound (one of my early sound locos). i hooked to a substantially long train to see what its pulling power was like. It performed great.

Then I realized that I had a friend coming over to pick me up to go somewhere. I thought, "I have just got to show this new loco off", to my friend. So I sent it up on a long curve section of track that quickly crossed over a nice trestle bridge I had built. Then let it set there idling until he arrived. I led him down to the basement to see my new loco. As he had arrived a little late for our planned trip, I realized this had to be a 'quick demo'. So I cranked it up with too much throttle, and with all of those freight cars behind it, and on a curved section of track, the resistance was just too large, and boom, off the rails the brand new loco tumbled sideways, and down onto the concrete floor. I WAS SICK.

And since we were in a hurry to leave I had to just pick up the pieces and place them in a box. For the next 6 hours all I could think of was getting back home and seeing how much damage had been done. Fortuitously the damage was not as bad as dreamed up (unbelievable).
 
montanan said:
I have never dropped one, but I have slightly damaged some trying to get them out of the packaging.
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That's the biggest reason by far that I never ever put them back in the original box. I have display cases on the walls that the locos go in once they're out of that box the first time. I do keep the original boxes in case I ever decide to sell them, but that is not their home :)

The cars are a different story. No way am I going to buy enough storage or display cases for all of those, but then again I don't break down and cry if one of them gets broken a little bit :D
 
I made a similar post a year ago when I was packing up an engine that I was getting ready to sell, and the front truck barely caught on a thread of my night robe sleeve and it landed hard nose-first on the concrete floor.

What a waste, but if it has not happened to you, it is only a matter of time.

I now pay attention to what I wear around the layout.


Bill
 
G'day..That sucks..sorry to read about your misfortune..I haven't dropped one but I've had one dropped..Two years ago I made a temporary layout at a craft fair and while my back was turned a little girl knocked one of my Bachmann SD40s onto the concrete floor from about 3 feet..The front trucks were dangling..so I put it to the side..It was too late and I was too tired to worry about it that night. Next morning (a Sunday ) I looked at it and mucked around.. All that had happened was the pin that secured the swivel point had come out from the keeper so I eased it back in..Took ten minutes or so but to my surprise once I put her on the track she ran perfectly..Also a broken handrail..still broken..one day I'll fix it ...perhaps...Hope you can do the same..Cheers Rod..
 
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Iron Horseman said:
If I followed that philosophy I might never run trains. I'm always cold in the basement.
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Anyone from Queensland will tell you - we'd kill to have cold basements to run our trains!! In Queensland, it's like operating in some kind of tropical furnace!!

Verandah model railways, anyone? ;)

Mitch
 
An update on my dropped Bowser. I was able to glue the little pieces in and have the loco on the track and it is holding up fine!

I did contact Bowser about getting a new sideframe for the truck side that was damaged, in case the repair does not last. They do not have a parts list or have they replied.

I think this will be my last Bowser loco. Athearn at least provided parts service!
 
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