Things that go wrong in the show, or Murphys law

[randgust]

While things may appear on the surface to have gone rather well at the Altoona show, with that many people, trains, and tiny mechanical gremlins all around us, it can never go 'perfect'.    I'll share some of my own rather absurd issues, feel free to tap in with your own experiences for mutual entertainment here....

Things really went pretty well on the loading and trip down, and got there early enough to not be the last one setting up my T-trak modules.   But this was also the very first time that my "Jamison" oil field module was shown fully operating, four operating wells, powerhouse, sound system on two sets of recharged batteries.  To transport, the well rods have to be removed, power batteries, etc.   Each well is powered by the powerhouse, and each well has a heavy lead fishing weight suspended inside the module to tension the system.   Or should.  But this has all the ingredients of a fail.

Somehow, one of the weights disappeared.   Without that, one well dead.   Quick, figure out an alternate weight!   Hmm.  I have paperclips.  Not heavy enough, think fast.....   ah-HA, I'll wrap a paperclip up in solder....I brought a full 8-ounce roll of Radio Shack solder.   And, miracle of miracles, that worked.  But it set up a series of events.... by just sticking the roll of solder in my pocket, along with a string level.

Testing showed a glitch on my track.   With those overhead rod lines, I even posted a warning sign so nobody would attempt to clean the track there, it's about invisible.    I start working on the offending kink...and I manage to rip out the rod lines, myself.   I'm the idiot that did it.   Get the pliers and tweezers and spend 20 minutes just repairing that one.

My Hickory Valley little layout set up OK, or so I thought.   Loaded all the equipment, closed it down for the night, including the log train down in the hidden loop.  Rushed down to the museum, and had an epic 'follow the Siri computer' run across town to have dinner with my friend at what turned out to be a nearly-abandoned Pizza Hut....   Made it back to the hotel to discover I'd left a bunch of stuff I needed at my table, convention center locked for the night, and still had the solder and level in my pocket, I'll take that back tomorrow, right?

Load the solder and level in my pants pockets Saturday, start running.    Startup of the Hickory Valley with a crowd present, go into the lower loop, and nothing comes back out.   Huh?   Check behind to discover a head-on collision between the HV train and the stored  log train, with equipment jammed and derailed everywhere.  But that track power switch was shut off??!  Dragged all the wrecked equipment out.... tested the siding, and sure enough, for the first time snce 1976, the SPST legacy toggle switch apparently failed and I could not shut the storage track off.    Well, I'll fix that, I have solder and an iron, flip the module and fix tomorrow.

Saturday night, the great dinner at the restaurant with 40 of us.   Get back in the car, and hear a rattle on the pavement.  What was that?  Got to the hotel, oh, that was the line level fell down beside the car.   Wait.   I also had that solder roll in my pocket, nowhere to be seen.   Oh well, it's just solder.   I can replace that if I have to, must have lost it at the restaurant, or in the car.    Search under the car seat, nothing.   Get a flashlight and search under the car, nothing.   People are now watching me at the hotel, amused, crawling under my car.  OK, I'll get more solder, just in case.  But I really like that stuff, I know exactly how it behaves on my handrail work.  No time to change material.

Did some googling.... Radio Shack 60-40, 8-ounce, rosin core thin stuff... OUT OF STOCK.   Check Ebay.   Yup.   But --- ready for this --- $85.00!! Holy crap.  Go out to the car again, search again,nothing.   Nuts.   I just lost an $85 roll of solder... (insert expletives freely).

Sunday morning, get back, flip the module, nothing obviously broken, OK, well I can't fix it.   No idea how that is now working with the switch off, checked it with the meter, yup, dead short.   Put the module back down, load the equipment, and trip over something behind my table UNDER my carry bag. 

It's the roll of solder, had fallen out of my pocket when I was trying to rerail equipment Saturday morning..... Oh, that's where it went....

Other than MK having great fun wrecking Thomas at Hickory Bridge, relatively normal.   When I got home, I'm still baffled by the fact the 1970's heavy SPST toggle had failed and locked on, rending my always dependable portable layout wounded.   Meter check, still shorted.

Finally, on examination, discover ONE STRAND of the wire had broken and shorted across the terminals.  Took 46 years to fail, but it finally did.  In a show.   

Lee Weldon has one as good....   

[MK]

Other than MK having great fun wrecking Thomas at Hickory Bridge, relatively normal.     

Shhhh!  You're not suppose to reveal how it was done! 

[tehachapifan]

I feel your pain! While I've never did a show, I have on a couple occasions had people visit my home layout. While I virtually never, ever have problems when running trains when by myself, I've had complete chaos ensue when visitors were present. During the most recent visit, nothing would stay on the track. Derailments everywhere! Haven't had a single derailment since and it's been months.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

This is the reason my dad hauls a giant toolbox to shows.

He infrequently needs it, but if he didn't have it?

All hell would break loose.

[wm3798]

Mine was simple.  And it was predictable, because I experienced the problem back in 2019 at the Jaffa Center, then neglected to repair it.

Because I didn't think I had to.

You know my tricky little light switch cum window A/C unit...  Well, during the 2019 show, I was having trouble with it keeping the lights on in the station module.  It really bugged me, because the station really looks good lit up.  All I could figure was that I had mounted it too low in the window, and the bottom sill was preventing the switch from traveling far enough to stay on.  After that show, when I brought home the modules, I put a fresh battery in and tried it again.  No problem.  Lights roared to life and stayed on literally for hours before the battery started to play out.  I even jostled the module periodically to see if I could make it flicker.  No dice.  Worked perfectly.

Meh, I figured.  Must have gotten a booger in it in transit, and it must have gotten free of it coming home.  I did plan to see if I could deal with it further when I got around to installing the lights on the bridge module.  Which of course never happened.  You'll recall that in 2021, when I bought my cabin in West Virginia, I literally took the modules with me to settlement, then set them up that night to photograph them "in situ" in their new home.  (The lights were tested and worked there, too!)

Well, I get up to the cabin once or twice a month, I don't carry my modeling tools with me, because the truck is full of table saws, chain saws, saw horses... you know, the 1:1 modeling arsenal.  So there they sat for a year until @Philip H and I picked them up last Friday.  At set up, I realized I'd neglected to bring a battery, then forgot to pick one up after dinner, so all day Saturday the module sat there, dark as Ed's soul.  Saturday night, I remembered to grab a battery on the way back from Todd Treaster's house, so I was all ready to light up everyone's day with my mastery of theatrical illusion.  I tucked the battery into the little building that conceals it, and the lights came on, No Problem!

Then @MK came around with his camera.  Or rather without it, at least while the lights were working.  He came back ready to shoot, and as Pat Travers Band once said, BOOM BOOM, Out Go the Lights!  I monkeyed with the switch, got a couple of flickers, then nothing.  Alas, when the paparazzi shows up, my skills as an electrician hide in the dark.

So fast forward, last night I set up the modules on the kitchen table.  I have some Unitrak I picked up in a lot box, and I wanted to see what I'd need to build a loop of modules to set up at the cabin.  I also might go ahead and put the lighting in on the other module.  And of course, I better fix that switch.  Because when I tried it again, here at 8 feet above sea level, this is what I get.



Every Flippin' Time.  Not even a hiccup.  One flip of the switch, steady burning.

Of course, with lights on, on closer examination, I can see the black CTC board that I so carefully installed in the dispatcher's office has been jostled off the wall, and has now been responsible for several severe injuries to the dispatcher and several clerks.  I'm going to have do some serious surgery to repair that, as the ceiling is fully enclosed to bounce light around.

Lee

[dem34]

My magic backpack has a tackle case of all the common tools for that.

Which doesn't resolve the fact that despite being up until 3AM the night before I left checking everything I was bringing with me cleared a coupler gauge and had good wheels and every engine was speed matched and consisted. I was unable to get any train I put down to play nice.

[mu26aeh]

Within a week of having my layout open to the public for the first time ever, my DCS 50 had to go back to Digitrax for repair.  Without that, I had no way to operate the layout.  Well, kind of.  I had a DB 150 booster but no throttle to control track power etc.  A kind hearted soul here on TRW read of my troubles and, living close by, offered up his DT400 throttle to get me thru the weekend.  Alas, the rest is history.  Thanks again @Ed Kapuscinski 

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Within a week of having my layout open to the public for the first time ever, my DCS 50 had to go back to Digitrax for repair.  Without that, I had no way to operate the layout.  Well, kind of.  I had a DB 150 booster but no throttle to control track power etc.  A kind hearted soul here on TRW read of my troubles and, living close by, offered up his DT400 throttle to get me thru the weekend.  Alas, the rest is history.  Thanks again @Ed Kapuscinski 

I got you homie!

[MK]

@wm3798 Lee, now that exposure looks MUCH better than the one you posted in the Altoona thread.  That's what I'm talking about, more subdued lighting which makes the building lights stand out.

Next time I'll hide my camera behind my back and sneak up on your module to take the picture.

[peteski]

@wm3798 Lee, now that exposure looks MUCH better than the one you posted in the Altoona thread.  That's what I'm talking about, more subdued lighting which makes the building lights stand out.

I have feeling that instead of changing the EV setting on his camera, Lee simply dimmed the ambient light . 

[wm3798]

Actually, I shot it on my kitchen table with a chandelier back lighting it pretty badly.  So pro-tip... rather than fuss with all the settings on your fancy digital camera, just use a phone camera and sh!tty lighting!
Lee

[peteski]

Actually, I shot it on my kitchen table with a chandelier back lighting it pretty badly.  So pro-tip... rather than fuss with all the settings on your fancy digital camera, just use a phone camera and sh!tty lighting!
Lee

Excellent tip Lee!   

[JMaurer1]

That we are an NTrak club, this is no surprise to me. We can set up and test everything before going to a show, load the modules up and take them to the venue, unload them and get them ready to run and find that what worked the night before is dead the next day. Of course, I am the only person who can quickly troubleshoot electrical problems (and they are ALWAYS electrical problems). Now all of our modules have soldered feeders (no screw terminals at all) and we exclusively use PowerPole connectors, arrange in a block so that nothing can get connected wrong, but after crawling around for 30 minutes (or more) I usually can find the wires that have resoldered themselves to the wrong power buss and the PowerPoles that have reorganized themselves in the block (and we use colored PowerPole covers to simplify making sure they are connected correctly). I don't know how it always happens, but it always does. Darn gremlins!