What was your biggest disaster when building your layout?


CSX_road_slug said:
My biggest "disaster" was failure to get advice from knowledgeable people before starting construction.
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That one point alone is probably the biggest "disaster saving tip" possible.

Sounds like you went through a lot for your layout, and raises a point that may not be considered - what you intend to do with your layout, have it as a private concern or, as you have done, run operating sessions. Possibly for many, the thought of running operating sessions isn't even in the equation when they start BUT, if there is a likely hood of that happening it should be considered from the outset.
 
wombat457 said:
... Possibly for many, the thought of running operating sessions isn't even in the equation when they start BUT, if there is a likely hood of that happening it should be considered from the outset.
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Yep, that's exactly what happened! This was just before I realized there was such a thing as internet forums for this hobby. I never planned on having more than myself or, at most, one additional guest operating trains on it at the same time. Later on when I posted an image of my track plan, a fellow modeler from my area commented that it had enough features to keep 3 or 4 people occupied at the same time, and before I knew it...there I was having op sessions!
 
Tony, I have no dedicated space to my new layout on the internet. It's a quiet thing I'm doing in my own sweet time, not with such a drive as with the last two layouts. At first, when I stopped working on it in early April, I felt at loose ends and wanted to keep going, but the lawn and garden was calling. We are into our first summer here, and there is much to do. Now, in early August, I told my daughter during a recent visit that I'm beginning to look forward to time finishing the tracks and running trains. I figure that'll happen after painting the backdrop, laying the tracks and wiring them for power, sometime in late October. I may post some photos on my photobucket account.
 
I guess my biggest disaster would have been the time I was scenicing my second N scale layout. Just finished "gooping" the mountain and thought I'd run an ore train around the layout to see how it looked.
Well it looked great all right, except for the big dog hair stuck to the roof of the caboose.

So I wet my finger and lightly pressed it onto the offending follicle, just lightly enough to have the entire train tip over into the wet plaster on the inside of the curve.
Yup, 36 cars imprinted into the side of the hill.
Two lessons were learned that day... One; stop the damn train first, and Two; do the plaster then go make a damn sandwich!
 
Selector said:
Tony, I have no dedicated space to my new layout on the internet. It's a quiet thing I'm doing in my own sweet time, not with such a drive as with the last two layouts. At first, when I stopped working on it in early April, I felt at loose ends and wanted to keep going, but the lawn and garden was calling. We are into our first summer here, and there is much to do. Now, in early August, I told my daughter during a recent visit that I'm beginning to look forward to time finishing the tracks and running trains. I figure that'll happen after painting the backdrop, laying the tracks and wiring them for power, sometime in late October. I may post some photos on my photobucket account.
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Crandell,

Moving into a new home brings with a whole menagerie of things to be done and I don't envy you that task. I was hoping that you may have a thread on here for the layout so we could follow along with your build.

Rico said:
I guess my biggest disaster would have been the time I was scenicing my second N scale layout. Just finished "gooping" the mountain and thought I'd run an ore train around the layout to see how it looked.
Well it looked great all right, except for the big dog hair stuck to the roof of the caboose.

So I wet my finger and lightly pressed it onto the offending follicle, just lightly enough to have the entire train tip over into the wet plaster on the inside of the curve.
Yup, 36 cars imprinted into the side of the hill.
Two lessons were learned that day... One; stop the damn train first, and Two; do the plaster then go make a damn sandwich!
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Rico,

Ouch, that must have hurt! Trying to picture the train with all that plaster on it, that must have taken some time to clean off.
 
I was modeling Appalachia, and had a coal mine/loader at the top of my layout, nearly 7' from the terrazzo floor. I used live loads. The unloading location was 30" from the floor. 12 feet away from the loading area. This meant very steep grades and very sharp curves. I lost 3 SD40-2s and 40 coal hoppers when everything went South on a trip down the mountain. I was cleaning up train parts and coal from the terrazzo for a week.
I've never had a grade of more than 2.5% since...
 
RICO:

I'm sorry to say it man, but your comment of "Yup, 36 cars imprinted in the side of the hill" got me to chuckling out loud for almost a minute visualizing what happened - and it ain't funny! Ouch!

Maybe you could/should tell everybody that you were just experimenting/practicing on how to, uh, string-line trains in, uh, wet conditions. :)

A "hard lesson" learned (we all take our turns at this).

DougC
 
bnsf971 said:
I was modeling Appalachia, and had a coal mine/loader at the top of my layout, nearly 7' from the terrazzo floor. I used live loads. The unloading location was 30" from the floor. 12 feet away from the loading area. This meant very steep grades and very sharp curves. I lost 3 SD40-2s and 40 coal hoppers when everything went South on a trip down the mountain. I was cleaning up train parts and coal from the terrazzo for a week.
I've never had a grade of more than 2.5% since...
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Terry,

Geeze, that hurts in more ways than one :(
 
bnsf971 said:
I was modeling Appalachia, and had a coal mine/loader at the top of my layout, nearly 7' from the terrazzo floor. I used live loads. The unloading location was 30" from the floor. 12 feet away from the loading area. This meant very steep grades and very sharp curves. I lost 3 SD40-2s and 40 coal hoppers when everything went South on a trip down the mountain. I was cleaning up train parts and coal from the terrazzo for a week.
I've never had a grade of more than 2.5% since...
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Well......the train was just superfluous anyway, could'a just used a shute :p:(
 
I don't think I had a disaster, but not having any hobby shops at all in my area really set back construction. When I started the layout I had a number of dealerships with different suppliers such as Walthers. I did stock up on what I thought I would need but I guess my disaster was thinking. Needless to say, one can't think of everything. I let the dealership go in the late 80's as a number of people that I was selling to either had to move from the state looking for better jobs or just didn't have the money to put into the hobby. The recession hit us pretty hard up here.

We did a lot of traveling and I would make a list of what I needed and was always on the lookout for decent hobby shops that were along our travel route. There were no internet retailers for model railroading at the time. I would stock up but there was always something that I forgot. I figure that I probably lost 6 to 7 years of work due to the lack of supplies.

I did have a great mentor while I was building my layout, the late Pete Ellis. I had attended numerous operating sessions at his place and he came down to visit me many times to make suggestions and keep me from making any serious mistakes. Guess I was lucky in this respect.

Terry - A steep grade with tight turns was one of the things that Pete had brought up. I have a 2 1/2 % grade on my layout that goes into a curve, but the curve as about a 42" radius. I found that if I have too long a train, over 70 cars, that the cars at the head end will lay over on their side unless I have a helper in the middle or at the rear. This is a rare happening as for me a normal train is usually 12 to 14 cars. My grand kids sometimes want to see how long a train we can run around the layout.
 
Hmmmm, biggest disaster? It's a toss up between two things:

1. I went for ultra-realistic modelling, which meant my locos were to actually burn diesel fuel. Eight years later and I'm still working out the bugs on that one. (Do you know how small a functional turbocharger is in HO scale?)

2. Real water. I had a creek running through town and one night we had a heavy rain. The flood wiped out five buildings on Main street and I didn't have flood insurance on any of them.
 
What about the tornado, JazzDad? Aren't you going to tell them about the tornado and the hail pounding dents in all of your rolling stock?
 
I couldn't name just one disaster - this hobby has been a real learning curve!! There's been a few things. I hope this list gives you guys a good laugh:

- Spilling black paint on the carpet
- Accidentally sitting on a Kato P42
- Constructing an S Bend on a 4% gradient which also featured a tunnel
- Running a brand new Kato Dash 9 over freshly ballasted track, only to have the gears in the bogies suck the ballast up
- Shocking myself on those neon signs from Miller Engineering
- Exploding a DC power pack (my excuse is it was a Bachmann one!!)
- Melting a set of points with a soldering iron
- Dropping the same soldering iron on my leg
- Experimenting with sprung diaphragms, only to ruin 8 Superliners
- Dropping a collection of Woodland Scenics plaster rocks on top of a completed Walthers Paper Mill
- Attempting to convert a boxcar from bogie-mounted to body-mounted couplers and accidentally Super-Gluing the bogies to the body
- Building staging with no access, despite it seeming like a good idea at the time
- Creating roads and footpaths out of plaster and realising that the plaster has seeped through cracks in the benchwork and hardened on the carpet
- Consistently changing track and layout plans regardless of how much work has been completed
- Having a family of small spiders call a tunnel home

I could go on forever!! Hahaha

Mitch
 
Dang Mitch, you could write a book! Glad that you aren't an airline pilot. I have small spiders also, but no tunnels; so they live on the undersides of many freight cars as unwanted hobos. A regular part of my maintenance is clearing spiderwebs from the snowplows of my diesels.

Willie
 
JazzDad said:
Hmmmm, biggest disaster? It's a toss up between two things:

1. I went for ultra-realistic modelling, which meant my locos were to actually burn diesel fuel. Eight years later and I'm still working out the bugs on that one. (Do you know how small a functional turbocharger is in HO scale?)

2. Real water. I had a creek running through town and one night we had a heavy rain. The flood wiped out five buildings on Main street and I didn't have flood insurance on any of them.
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Ahhh, real water + layout = disaster that's for sure.

SunsetLimited said:
I couldn't name just one disaster - this hobby has been a real learning curve!! There's been a few things. I hope this list gives you guys a good laugh:

- Spilling black paint on the carpet
- Accidentally sitting on a Kato P42
- Constructing an S Bend on a 4% gradient which also featured a tunnel
- Running a brand new Kato Dash 9 over freshly ballasted track, only to have the gears in the bogies suck the ballast up
- Shocking myself on those neon signs from Miller Engineering
- Exploding a DC power pack (my excuse is it was a Bachmann one!!)
- Melting a set of points with a soldering iron
- Dropping the same soldering iron on my leg
- Experimenting with sprung diaphragms, only to ruin 8 Superliners
- Dropping a collection of Woodland Scenics plaster rocks on top of a completed Walthers Paper Mill
- Attempting to convert a boxcar from bogie-mounted to body-mounted couplers and accidentally Super-Gluing the bogies to the body
- Building staging with no access, despite it seeming like a good idea at the time
- Creating roads and footpaths out of plaster and realising that the plaster has seeped through cracks in the benchwork and hardened on the carpet
- Consistently changing track and layout plans regardless of how much work has been completed
- Having a family of small spiders call a tunnel home

I could go on forever!! Hahaha

Mitch
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Mitch,

While nothing that happened to you is funny, I couldn't help laughing by the time I finished reading your list, it is priceless and probably 90% of what you listed has happened to all of us at one time or another.

Soldering irons and I don't have the best relationship either, I have lost count of the times I have laid one down on something just to melt it, burn it irreparably or almost set fire to it - myself included!
 
Years ago I had this "container" I bought from the hobby shop of spikes. FULL of spikes as I was handlaying, Technically about a cup full of spikes, 5000 maybe? I accidentally dropped the container to the floor spilling practically all of it. I picked up -every- single spike or tried to.
I still have this container and use it to hold spikes, I actually used up the spikes.

My current layout plans is multi-deck but now I think its more problematic so replanning an alterantive no more than 2 decks but stretching it way out, still using modules, so its a no brainer moving them. No tearing out.
Just some redesigning.
 
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