Scattered Thoughts . . .

It doesn't matter what I attempt to fix... the house, the car, my bicycle... I always end up with complications requiring more time, more effort and more parts. Working on my small collection of model railroad trains is no different.   I acquired a broken Lionel GP-7 diesel from a friend. This engine just would not kick into gear. It turns out that there were no gears attached to either of the motors to engage those gears!   I did a little research and found that Lionel had come up with a really poor design for some of these engines which used a plastic gear affixed to a smooth metal shaft... the gear inevitably would quickly work itself free from the smooth shaft leaving no way for the motor(s) to engage the gears. The motors would just spin and spin while the locomotive remained motionless.  So, I figured, "I'll just replace those motors with new motors that have metal gears on their shafts." As is the case with most projects, I thought it would be a relati

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