Scattered Thoughts . . .

I'm still slowly recovering from last week's attempt at a 'routine' colonoscopy which was anything but routine and only resulted in anaphylaxis and more than a week (at this point) of recovery. Overall, I'm still sticking close to the bathroom and I'm still feeling rather lousy. Considering all of this, I'm really not getting much accomplished and what little I do attempt to accomplish is on a rather small scale. In this case, it is 1/4" scale! I suspected I would need a long recovery from this procedure even if all went well so I had already stocked up on some supplies to accomplish a small model railroading project, little by little, as I felt up to it. So, by doing a little bit each day, I've been making a bit of headway on a long overdue model railroading project.  What prompted this project is that I needed a few different test tracks. As I was coming up with ideas on the best way to do this while also trying to save space I decided to c

My two newly procured Atlas F9 O scale diesel locomotives arrived in the mail today. (Thank you to our friend and mail-carrier, Christine! By the way, we all need to get together for a few drinks soon!) These two fairly large locomotives were packaged very nicely. When I finally unwrapped all of the protective wrapping, they were in much nicer condition than I had imagined. They actually look significantly less used than my previously procured Atlas F9 diesel. This was great news! Next was to set up a test track so I could see how well they run... I pulled out some 2 rail, O scale track... I assembled about a dozen straight pieces to make a 12 foot test track... grabbed my old trusty power pack (these are old analog DC locomotives)... I quickly dug out a couple of power leads with alligator clips... connected the clips to the track... plugged in the power... and placed the first locomotive on the track... The lights came on and it runs very nicely! It runs smoothly at slo

Today is a rather lousy health day for me so I am stuck in the house trying to find something interesting to do which will not make my health any worse. Since I have some model railroading trains sitting out and about after our annual train show in Springfield, I decided I would see why one of our Lionel GP-7's will not move in forward or reverse. When I power it up, everything seems to work just fine including the sound. When I try to put it in forward or reverse, I can hear the twin motors whirring away so I know the motors run but the gears are not engaging. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the little gear that is supposed to be on the end of the motor driveshaft has broken off each motor. These gears were cheapo plastic gears that were somehow affixed to the smooth metal driveshaft (I have one of the broken gears in the bottom of the styrofoam box for the locomotive). It clearly was a poor design and I knew I would not be able to fix this problem without replacing a f

Here is a short video of this new Hudson locomotive I picked up at the train show. I don't have any control over the sound with my current transformers so the sound isn't working as it should but you can hear some of the sounds playing randomly. Plus, I have no battery in the locomotive allowing the sound the continue through direction changes. The sounds do play, but not in any particular order nor do I have control over them with my old Lionel transformer. That being said, the locomotive does run with this old transformer so I can run the train while I am waiting for my new MTH transformer! I'm looking forward to installing a battery into the sound system and using the new transformer with this locomotive!