I want to start a thread as a running record of all those projects that you've tried....with the best of intentions...that in retrospect turned out to be way too expensive/difficult/unrewarding to ever repeat again. Lord only knows I've got enough to fill a thread.... I wouldn't really call them 'mistakes', because for the most part, you finish them, look in the rear view mirror, and say NEVER EVER EVER again. Here's the ones immediately at hand for me.... 1) BY A LONG SHOT. Home photoetching ANYTHING. Now I know that Chris333 is really good at this and he's taught me a lot, but of all the things I thought I'd try myself that I've decided are just WAY too difficult, this takes the record. All the fun of a home meth lab without the financial rewards. When you find yourself in a hazmat suit to do a hobby, working in the dark with materials that can dissolve steel, and trying to find 'materials disposal sites' in the yellow pages its time to step back and think.... 2) Converting a Life-Like SW8 to an SW1. I did this.....once.... and I'll never do it again. It involved all the usual fun, plus redrilling and recasting part of the frame, making new spacers, pickups, grinding.... wow. By comparison, the Kato frame is a relatively easy job. 3) Converting an Atlas 2-6-0 chassis to an 0-6-0t. Wow, what a great idea that was! Right up until the moment you discover that to move the rear traction tire to the center to get pickup, you have to pull all the drivers and requarter everything....perfectly.... 3) Making a working N brass crankshaft for a scratchbuilt Shay before Atlas did theirs, and make it spin. Need I say more? That about put even me in the nuthouse, and no, it didn't work. Close, but no cigar. What's yours?
Several come to mind, but for viewers here, I'll share two. #1: Building a "portable" modular layout, and semi-permanently installing the layout onto the walls. When time came to move, the layout came with me, but the process of removing the layout removed part of the wall coatings. Paint, wall texture, and part of the drywall paper got ripped off in large sections. The repairs were fun! Not. #2: Attempting to build a snow scene with ground foam materials already applied to the ground. The dye can and will bleed throught your stark white snow and tint it greenish blue. Trees included. I have a can of gesso, and I know how to use it, but I need to recoat (at least 3 times) all the hydrocal "snow". If the dried AZ Rock & Mineral "snow" on the tracks doesn't dry stark white, I'll have to recoat it too. Grrrrrrrrrrr.....
Well where do I start? Hmmm. So many things. A well a few that immediately come to mind. 1. Never again will I tackle changing the driving wheel arrangement on a steamer. Now maybe with a full fledged mini machine shop with a lathe, big assortment of brass stock, and one heck of a high tech soldering tool. 2. Try adding trailing trucks, or lead trucks, again to a steamer, trying to use existing parts. Especially when the steamer chassis was never designed for it. Way better to use brass stock and wheels and build the trucks. 3. Try to convert an N scale, again steamer, from N to Nn3, including the tender trucks. In this case a Bmann 4-4-0. However cutting two up and bashing into a 4-6-0 was worth it since I ended up with two of the strongest pulling steamers, including the newer larger stuff around. 4. Never again will I take the parts left from the 4-4-0 kit bashing and build the 4-2-0 and then be stubborn enough to make it run instead of the static display it was supposed to be. It does run but will only pull itself. I would have been far better off to have thrown the parts in the bin and eventually used the boiler remains as a stationary steam boiler for a business. 5. While I like both of my standard gauge Class A Climax locos which are built on SW chassis it was a lot of work fabricating the bodies, trimming up Bmann 4-4-0 boilers and other things. Especially now that I have found that the heavy cast Republic Locomotive Works Class A Climax body can be milled out some and mounted on a similar mechanism in standard gauge. Thus saving a lot of work and the added weight a big tractive effort improvement. 6. Trying to make decals for car lettering in gold or yellow to go over dark green paint using the existing systems for inkjet printers. After a lot of countless efforts including trying colored decal paper and colored backgrounds it just doesn't work and not worth the expense. And the paint colors available do not even come close to the colors available off the printers. Far easier to adapt existing decals to what I need, or even lettering from an alphabet set considering the small number of cars to do. There is more but this is a starter.
Mr. Moore: I spent the better part of a summer a few years ago trying to get around the fact that I do not have an Alps printer. No matter what, clear decals, white decals, inkjet, laser, whatever, it never came out right with anything lighter than a deep brown or black. Each time I used white paper, I was never able to match up the printer color with the car color even with messing around with the RGB mix and the other way. CarlH: Been there and done that (unknowingly, of course).
Randy, what an masochistic topic... My list is long, but the most recent "never again" involves installing and wiring 34 Tortoises (Torti?) with hot frogs and associated DCC Switch-it's on the underside of a staging yard that's 28" off the floor....couldn't sit, couldn't lay down, couldn't move, couldn't see or find tools except of course for the hot soldering iron when I wasn't reaching for IT, ouch, I felt like a giant sloth slithering around in the model underworld darkness for days, my aging neck, shoulders and oh my back killing me, while attempting to do precision work in constant fear of hot solder dripping on my face....oh what fun this hobby can be! Never again, but then I don't have to, I'm DONE and it works, and I feel a sense of accomplishment when I push say Macro 67 and nine turnouts magically align for the selected yard track at once. Oh the joy of model railroading.... Regards, Otto
Well, I have to put the "inkjet decal" thing on my list - but only for locos and cars. I might still use it for structures, as long as there's a grout line that can hide the edge. The rest of my projects are still in the "I can make this work" stage. No, it's not denial! (Did I just deny that I'm in denial?) There's an old saying: "It's good to learn from your mistakes, but it's better to learn from someone else's". I guess I just don't listen.
"Experienced is a harsh instructor. She test first and teaches afterward." - not sure who of if I got it exactly right < bemused grin > I'll never try to open a spray can with a knife - again, (Fotheringil knew this was coming) Dream of a layout bigger than I can construct - ya, right. Ask for help, moi? Take anything more than the shell off a locomotive Try to fix anything I took more than the shell off of Take two perfectly good cars and kitbash them to create a perfectly useless car Start a thread on trainboard Make self deprecating remarks Razz Fotheringil Go off topic
not an N scale guy but I have had my experiences of will never do again! 1. lean across a DCC yard to re-rail some cars and lay my metal watch across the live rails. OUCH. I never knew DCC could pack such a shock. 2. sling plaster to create street running, I'm terrible at it. Plus I never could get rid of the hump because the street would have to match the track. 3. on the same road project, paint the road lines freehanded with the brush available on hand. Last minute dash for an open house meant this road got repainted just flat black in the end. 4. Never will I try to use everything I have in my fleet again. In my attempt to use EVERYTHING I had I ended up with the worlds dumbest looking and poorest running train. Tyco, bachmann, proto 2000, athearn genesis, you name it! 5. never again will I lay my soldering iron on the ground near me when I am working under the layout. I melted the sole of my shoe and didn't even notice until the smoke started rising. 6. attempt to wire common rail (please don't bash me, this is just my opinion!). My brass alco models U25B had some words to say to me after that. we all live and learn
Well the actual ones were good for 2 or 3 cars back when and this critter had all traction tires since it was a tender drive. Photo of the actual critter. Maybe someday when I'm totally bored and have nothing to do I'll revisit this thing and see what can be done.
Never again will I go ahead and glue down turnouts that I KNOW I will be hooking up to under-table mounted servos... without predrilling the servo wire holes. D'oh!
Never smoothing hot glue with my finger or thumbs again like I did today Yeah....right...LMAO. :tb-biggrin: I'm nursing 2 blisters from doing that. It has to do with that " Doing something the same way over and over again...expecting different results each time !"
I will never install turnouts without power routing. The turnouts will work for a time and then they will occasionally not work. Adding power routing after installation is painful. The lesson is: Feed The Frog.
arghh: Build a layout larger than available space allows ... got it done but gave up work bench, storage space, and ease of access. Took it all down after a few years and now have a very managable project. biggrin:
