Scattered Thoughts . . .

W hile I'm in the house every day this week while still recovering from a very busy week last week, I've been doing some maintenance on some of my model railroading locomotives in between long naps.  Earlier this week, I cleaned and lubed a big Fn3 scale steam locomotive.  That little project went extremely well so I continued testing various locomotives and provided maintenance on them as needed.   The latest two locomotives I worked on were two MTH O scale locomotives.  One was a steam locomotive and one was a diesel locomotive.  I haven't run either of these locomotives in a number of years so I expected them to need some work.  I already knew that the MTH steam locomotive needed new traction tires so that is where I started.  I had the new traction tires on hand so that seemed like the logical place to start. Since I hadn't used either of these MTH locomotives in a few years, I quickly realized that I have forgotten how to set up the power control for these MTH loco

As I wrote in my previous blog entry, I am in need of a few days of recovery after yesterday's bout with poor health. It is Day 1 of recovery and I am already bored. My boredom and need to accomplish something overruled my need to rest and recover (I may pay for this tomorrow). I pulled the new large scale steam locomotive and its tender down to the floor... grabbed some tools... plugged in a DC transformer from my O scale narrow gauge trains... and started to unscrew hidden screws... No task is simple, especially when trying to recover from anaphylaxis the day before, but I quickly realized that the first four screws I needed to remove were a bit stripped and none of my screwdrivers could hold well enough to be effective. Quickest solution... grind down one of my screwdrivers to make it fit well enough... After some grinding, one of my screwdrivers fit well and I managed to disassemble the tender which houses the sound card. The battery contacts powering the sound card wer