Lost an Atlas GP40-2 due to a violation of my own rule of NO LONG SLEEVES AROUND THE LAYOUT AND ROLLING STOCK!! I experienced the ever-feared "snag" and dragged the UP unit right off a shelf. Needless to say, the concrete garage floor took it's toll . This was a recent prized auction purchase too! Russ
Sorry to hear about your loss ...even if it was a UP unit...just kidding Luckily, I haven't lost any of my expensive (Atlas, KATO, Micro-Trains) rolling stock to "Cliff Crashes"...YET! I do like your "no long sleeves" rule. It's something I've never thought about but will certainly institute around my trains from now on. That "plastic on hard floor sound" is a real blood curdler around a train layout. [ 05 March 2001: Message edited by: Maxwell Plant ]
The floor of my train room (shed) has a very thick carpet, so models can survive any gravity-related accidents
Thats the best advice I have heard in a long time Alan. Once all the messy scenery work is done, I will put carpet where the probability of accidents may happen.
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Thats the best advice I have heard in a long time Alan. Once all the messy scenery work is done, I will put carpet where the probability of accidents may happen. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Only problem with accidents is that they occur in the least probable areas. Very good idea, got to do something to stop those engines and everything else from breaking from one fall. Carpet is a pretty good protectant, nice on the feet too. Unless you happen to be doing some work on the layout, and drop one of those tiny ever elusive yet expensive detail parts that you have spent hours researching, painting and glueing to make perfect. Those are the moments that your wife truely starts to question your sanity, when she finds you balled up on the floor in a sobbering fit moaning "Its just gotta be here somewhere!" Cheers
Sorry for you Tehachapi, This tragedy reminds of the murphy's law : 1°It is always your most expensive and beloved stuff that falls on the floor 2° Your old arnold S2 wich sounds like a coffee grinder and run like a taiwan clock will never fall anywhere (see n°1) 3° You never can build your railroad in room with a carpet but have to emigrate in the only room with concrete floor in the house 4° Never lost a MT coupler spring between 2 boards of your wood floor ? 5° If the answer to n°4 is no, you probably build your couplers in the bathtub To something, a tragedy is sometimes worth : You could think of a wreck scene on your layout... friendly, marc
The answer is no to #4 but the downside of carpeting, especially quality stuff is: try finding a MT spring in it!
I have found a nice compromise to the carpet. I have a layout that is not completely finished but it is built on the standard L-girder system so there are spaces (especially on hidden sections that have very small margins on either side of the rail. After having a couple of gravity accidents I purchased a fine net or screen material and hung it on the bottom of the layout. I can snap it open and shut to get to the hard to reach spaces and the wiring but it has saved me many times. Nothing like having a safety net to save the expensive equipment. Bryan
1) For once THE WORLD ISN'T ROUND 2) How about installing gutter around the layout?? it'll catch everything you knock off 3) I dropped an N scale CW40-8, it just bent the front handrails, and it fell from 52" inches (level of layout) to the DEEP, DIRTY PITS OF.... heck-floor.
I dropped one of my Kato/Atlas UP GP7s on the floor one day. Nothing happend to it. However, one day I was working on one of my ConCor Bigboys trying to get the thing to run a simple loop when I dropped it on the floor and broke the pilot off. The gears were so covered in grease I had to use Remington Scrubber for firearms to clean them off. No wonder the thing didn't move. I had to get a new pilot from CC and it runs like a swiss watch now. If you have an overlubed loco Remington Scrubber will get it off. It evaporates oil and grease leaving a clean dry surface that you can lube with you favorite oil. Just don't get it on plastic or you will be left with a sticky mess.
I like the idea of the gutter around the edges: line the bottom with soft cloth * velvet/faux fur, or carpeting?* Would make a great place to store small tools, rail car routing orders, cordless throttles, etc. I like the rule, and will instate it on my own pike when it comes to pass...any other rules I should know about? * I know all about the spring in the carpet deal......
sorry to double, but in a recent issue of Model Railroader*pg 70,Jan '01 issue; 3-D waterscapes* I saw a sweeeeeeet New Haven HO scale layout that featured a plexiglas harbor water scene.. It included a see-thru edge, so I could see a New England fihing town: car traps, boats/their keels, bridge pilings, etc. I want to replicate it, in my own way, like situate it off of a dangerous curve on my pike, like a loco or car or two would have wrecked, and become unsalvageable/ total loss. Use the loco or car that just got totalled, and make a scene with it of a past wreck.... Are the wheels a-turnin'?
hey hemi, I was joking about the gutter . but if you think it's a good I dea, USE IT!! I thoguyth of it as if you train ran off(or was drug off) the layout it would just fall in the gutter. lIne it with either extra carpet scraps, felt, or whatever would cushion the "run-offs" good luck!
When dad and I worked on top of the open areas of a layout, we had a section of nurseryman's netting (black sun shade net) hung from curtain rods that could be unhooked from either side. Tools, wire, whatever, only fell into the net, and we could just reach in and get it. When working under the layout, the net was simply unhooked and hung on the other side out of the way. He had a Jeweler's workbench that had the canvas "drawer" that pulls out about 4" from the front to catch any wristwatch gears, springs screws (000-172's) that might fall or roll off. I am installing the same thing on my new workbench.
