Your Clark Griswold moments....

[randgust]

I think about everybody relates to the "Christmas Vacation" scene where Clark has the enormous Christmas light display, goes to plug it in, and nothing happens.  At all.   Inexplicable electrical failure.  And at one point, he simply looses it.    FYI, in filming the 'kick the Santa" scene, Chevy Chase reportedly actually broke his own toe kicking the light display.

So, my main ATSF layout is still DC, original work back in '83.   Cab control, 2 cabs, pretty basic but still DPDT toggle controlled.  As it's not that big, even a second operator is a rarity, but it's wired that way.    The 'lower level' is an 8-track storage and staging yard, with a reversing loop.  That's all one block off the main as you never, ever want two people messing in there at the same time.  Now I know that you DCC guys may not have this, but random acts of electron misbehavior aren't unique to DC.  Just different.

So it's that time of year to get everything running again for fall.   Mains working good, dropped the passenger train down into storage, and it abruptly stalls   The polarity approach indicators aren't lit.  Nothing moves.   Handheld cab dead?   Switched back to pure DC, nope.   Check left cab....whoa, that one works, only the right side is dead....?   But EVERY STORAGE TRACK is also now dead, including the system I developed for automatic train stop and pushbutton release, so it's stuck again.  So every train I own is now marooned in storage.    Well, that's unanticipated.   Open up the panels (also dating back to '83, spot a broken wire dangling.  Uh-oh.   Where did that one come from in the nest of all things hell?    It's the 'emergency backup' system I developed, so that there's no freakin' way you can accidently back out of the storage yard in DC without holding down the emergency pushbutton to bridge around diodes that only allow forward movement.    Hmmm.... how did I ever wire that again?

Hours of frustration now ensue on what is now, effectively, a completely dead layout.    I'm finally isolating the first problem (dead right cab entire level) to what simply CAN'T be, a suddenly failed micro DPDT toggle.    I have 'jumper cables' with little alligator clips for just such emergencies, jump around the toggle....that's it.   OMG, that's just unbelievable.   The toggle 'feels right', but on one side, just doesn't work.   Put in a replacement toggle, test it, that's it....but it can't be....?   Test the old one with a meter.   Yep, both sides of one throw no longer work at all.   It took 40 years, but a Radio Shack DPDT toggle failed.   Not erratic, failed.   I'll have to do an autopsy, but not tonight.

Now, all storage tracks still dead.  And one dangling wire.  And 40 years later, how the **%$$! did I wire this?  Getting close to spontaneous combustion tracing the wiring and can't figure out the power feed, makes no sense now.   What idiot wired this?

Finally, with a magnifying glass, spot a tiny too-bright metal wire spot next to another toggle controlling all the storage siding feeds.   Hmmm.... that looks suspicious......   test with the jumper cable from my loose wire.    Bingo.   That's the wire break.   A nick on a solid wire, next to a soldered joint, breaks at the same exact time a toggle switch fails.   Resoldered...tested.....  And magically, now everything works again.   This was a fixed feed panel connection, no flex or movement stress, just finally decided to fail.

When I built it I used the highest standards, no crimp joints, good wire, all soldered.   And for the most part, it's held up really well.   But there was nobody there to witness the Griswold explosion when 'this can't possibly happen!!!' actually happens....

How about yours?

[Lemosteam]

Annnnd cue my favorite quotes from the movie before he kicked the Santa: 

Setting: On the front snow-covered lawn when Clark is trying to show his grand display and the lights wont work.

Grandma Frances, drunken, burping liquor: "I hope you kids see what a silly waste of resources this was."

Audrey sweetly: "But he worked really hard grandma."

Grandpa Art sarcastically: "So do washing machines."

 

[wm3798]

Mine was many, many years ago.  I was maybe 14 or 15. 
My parents held an annual Christmas party for years, and many of Dad's friends were railroaders.  (He was a traffic manager and a pretty substantial shipper)
Well, at our old house, my brother's HO set up was a focal point.   After he went off to college, it fell to me and my tiny N scale to entertain the troops.
The night before the party I worked hard to make sure my trains were running.  The Burlington Northern u33CG from Trix for the benefit of Barry Axford, the BN rep,  the Pennsy 2-10-0 was the closest thing I had for Conrail rep Duane Crips, my Chessie F9 from Bachmann would catch the attention of George Bull of the B&O, and my Model Power GP40 in Western Maryland, which of course ran dreadfully, was there as an homage to Dick Costello, who recently got forced at gunpoint to work for Chessie, as he was a WM man through and through.
Anyway, satisfied that the trains would operate by about 10 pm, I turned my attention to structure lighting.
Afterall, what is a Christmas Garden in a Baltimore basement without a little twinkle?
I took an old set of mini lights, and discovered that if I trimmed out sequences of 4 or 5 lamps, I could wire them in parallel off of my power pack's 14v AC terminal and get good light levels without having to use the whole 100 lamp string.
Merrily I rolled along, until about 2 am, cutting, positioning , wiring and soldering, until I had about 30 or 40 lights installed.
Having subsisted only on cheetos and root beer, the advancing hour was taking its toll.
At last I decided it was time to test the set up.

...

So I wired the PLUG into my parallel circuit, and proudly initiated the test by plugging it in...

...

To the 110 socket!

KaBLAM!  In  a flash... literally... 40 tiny lamps inhaled the current quickly, burst with a powerful pop, and the breaker threw  the circuit, plunging the basement into pre-dawn blackness.
Hours of labor lost.

I fumbled my way to the fuse box, turned the lights back k on to inspect the aftermath.

It looked like Dresden.  Shattered bulbs everywhere, a thin cast of smoke still hanging in the air.

I went to bed exasperated,  pondering tennis or philately as a more suitable pastime.

Lee

[randgust]

Somehow I'm imagining the fried shadow of the Chessie Kitten somehow burned into the layout......

[learmoia]

Somehow I'm imagining the fried shadow of the Chessie Kitten somehow burned into the layout......

LOL!!!!!

[chessie system fan]

This seems like a good thread for @u18b to share how his very first time playing with N scale went.

[ednadolski]

One year when I was a kid, a bird flew in thru an open door and hid in the living room Christmas tree.

Ed

[DirtyD79]

One year when I was a kid, a bird flew in thru an open door and hid in the living room Christmas tree.

Ed

One year my brother's cat Ozzy knocked the tree down. I think he either wanted to climb it, wanted to use it for a scratching post or he wanted to play with some of the ornaments.

[craigolio1]

I don’t know so much if they are Clark Griswold moments per se (they may be more akin to Ralphie’s old man in A Christmas Story) but two of my favourite Christmas memories of my dad stand out.

One was when we had successfully spent the day hunting a glorious U-cut tree, dad had wrangled this thing into the living room. They always look smaller in the field and this one didn’t disappoint. Instead of laying it back down and taking it out of the stand to cut the stump, her cut the top off. It left the top about two feet wide and much to the dismay of my mom… no top upon which to put our angel. Dad being the problem solver that he was he promptly produced two chop sticks from the kitchen and duct taped them the the top and VOILA! An angels purch . Mom was not impressed but satisfied.

The second could very well have been the same Christmas… or any Christmas. The tree was always glorious and inevitably ended up staying up past its expiration date. On this year dad had missed the date that the trash trucks take trees and didn’t want it in the yard all spring and summer. So he put it out in the back yard set it on fire. WOOF!  It got a little bigger than he thought it would and started to burn the grass. No white Christmas in Vancouver. So he lassoed the stump with a rope and dragged it around the yard until it burned out. I have no idea why he didn’t use a hose. Maybe it was put away for the winter.

Spectacular. Here’s to my dad. A man I admire and try to emulate everyday.

Craig.   

[Loren Perry]

Now we know where all those striking Hollywood comedy writers have been hanging out. There's some really great humor in these posts.

Like your layout, mine is also pre-DCC with blocks, tons of wiring, toggle switches, and all the rest. When I was building it, I tried to emulate the NASA designers of interplanetary spacecraft who designed and built machines that could continue to function autonomously for many years as they sent data and images back to earth from millions of miles (and many years) away. All joints soldered, no suitcase or other convenient connectors, heat shrink tubing on all soldered connections, wires bundled into neat cables with plenty of support over long runs, LED's instead of incandescent bulbs, and so on.

My contribution to this particular discussion, though minor in comparison to yours, involves a large swath of urban structure lighting going dark and I couldn't find the problem for a few days. Eventually, I discovered that the main power source, a "wall wart" located under the layout's benchwork, had backed out ever so slightly from its power socket after years of dependable service. Not enough to spot visually, but just enough to break the circuit. Once I pushed it back in - about 1/16"of an inch - problem solved.

I also had a miniature DPDT switch fail internally which partially disabled a track section. That one took me a while because I had a hard time accepting the fact that such a normally trouble-free and simple little device could actually stop the show. So that woke me up.

Today, my old-school N-scale layout functions trouble free. It may well outlive me and that's all I need.

I think about everybody relates to the "Christmas Vacation" scene where Clark has the enormous Christmas light display, goes to plug it in, and nothing happens.  At all.   Inexplicable electrical failure.  And at one point, he simply looses it.    FYI, in filming the 'kick the Santa" scene, Chevy Chase reportedly actually broke his own toe kicking the light display.

So, my main ATSF layout is still DC, original work back in '83.   Cab control, 2 cabs, pretty basic but still DPDT toggle controlled.  As it's not that big, even a second operator is a rarity, but it's wired that way.    The 'lower level' is an 8-track storage and staging yard, with a reversing loop.  That's all one block off the main as you never, ever want two people messing in there at the same time.  Now I know that you DCC guys may not have this, but random acts of electron misbehavior aren't unique to DC.  Just different.

So it's that time of year to get everything running again for fall.   Mains working good, dropped the passenger train down into storage, and it abruptly stalls   The polarity approach indicators aren't lit.  Nothing moves.   Handheld cab dead?   Switched back to pure DC, nope.   Check left cab....whoa, that one works, only the right side is dead....?   But EVERY STORAGE TRACK is also now dead, including the system I developed for automatic train stop and pushbutton release, so it's stuck again.  So every train I own is now marooned in storage.    Well, that's unanticipated.   Open up the panels (also dating back to '83, spot a broken wire dangling.  Uh-oh.   Where did that one come from in the nest of all things hell?    It's the 'emergency backup' system I developed, so that there's no freakin' way you can accidently back out of the storage yard in DC without holding down the emergency pushbutton to bridge around diodes that only allow forward movement.    Hmmm.... how did I ever wire that again?

Hours of frustration now ensue on what is now, effectively, a completely dead layout.    I'm finally isolating the first problem (dead right cab entire level) to what simply CAN'T be, a suddenly failed micro DPDT toggle.    I have 'jumper cables' with little alligator clips for just such emergencies, jump around the toggle....that's it.   OMG, that's just unbelievable.   The toggle 'feels right', but on one side, just doesn't work.   Put in a replacement toggle, test it, that's it....but it can't be....?   Test the old one with a meter.   Yep, both sides of one throw no longer work at all.   It took 40 years, but a Radio Shack DPDT toggle failed.   Not erratic, failed.   I'll have to do an autopsy, but not tonight.

Now, all storage tracks still dead.  And one dangling wire.  And 40 years later, how the **%$$! did I wire this?  Getting close to spontaneous combustion tracing the wiring and can't figure out the power feed, makes no sense now.   What idiot wired this?

Finally, with a magnifying glass, spot a tiny too-bright metal wire spot next to another toggle controlling all the storage siding feeds.   Hmmm.... that looks suspicious......   test with the jumper cable from my loose wire.    Bingo.   That's the wire break.   A nick on a solid wire, next to a soldered joint, breaks at the same exact time a toggle switch fails.   Resoldered...tested.....  And magically, now everything works again.   This was a fixed feed panel connection, no flex or movement stress, just finally decided to fail.

When I built it I used the highest standards, no crimp joints, good wire, all soldered.   And for the most part, it's held up really well.   But there was nobody there to witness the Griswold explosion when 'this can't possibly happen!!!' actually happens....

How about yours?