Drove myself to distraction trying to determine why the locomotive won’t move on the electric train. My brother sent me the train 5 or so years ago, and fully remembering from my youth the man hours that can be consumed dealing with the frustrations arising from such enterprises, I have resisted all urges to even unpack the “labors of Hercules”. Well early this month my brother (who is buying a much smaller home with him and his wife) sent me a huge box of track and accessories—the wife went crazy with excitement and anticipation, and the application of pressure to realize HER fantasy commenced. By now she knows exactly which threats successfully push my buttons, and convinced that my lack of anxiety inducing activities due to covid is bad for me, she tells me that SHE will herself undertake the task of constructing the railroad, knowing full well that I realize the implications in THAT threat.
Well the long and short of this is that the tree being up and lit, the “boss” determined the railroad should not only go around the tree, but extend the full length of the living room along some 25 feet of 2 walls 20 feet apart. A phone call to my brother assured her that we had more than an ample supply of track, and he suggested with the switches we could branch off from the huge oval to extend the track into the hallway, through the legs of the piano, into the dining room and back to the “mainline” oval of the living room. I knew from experience that this was no simple project. What I didn’t know was about the fiendish “advances” in track technology and the horrors of something called “real trax”. Looking at the stuff, I became immediately suspicious, because connecting the O gauge sections was clearly not as simple as plugging them into one another as was the O gauge track of my youth. This stuff involved connecting the track through intersecting clips that required the sections to come together at an angle starting at an outside rail, then snapping the remaining 2 rails in place—BIG frustrating pain in the ass!! Not only are the copper clips susceptible to deform and even breakage, there is guaranteed circuit continuity failure in trackage of extensive length and current drop with distance from the point of power application. Thinking about it, I decided to first clean the rails with isopropyl alcohol (99%). Then treat each copper clip to a bath in contact cleaner. The wife, at first suspecting these measures as unnecessary foot dragging attempts to delay fulfillment of her fantasies, settled down after I showed her some of the documented suicide notes and attempts on the part of others dealing with this track. So—a day and a half of cleaning track, as well as the wheels and rollers of the passenger cars, then another day of painstaking assembly, rolling the passenger cars along the assembled track to check the current continuity through watching for the blinking of their interior lighting as they roll on the line. So, the main oval is connected with additional power applications every 20 feet or so of track—steady power, no dropouts. And now a locomotive that sits there all lit up and mocking me with its immobility. Went to the net, called the “service”(cruel misnomer) department of the manufacturer, currently engrossed in the joys of going out of business with the wonderful consequence of no one available to point me toward a solution. I dis get some phone numbers from the poor guy left behind to man the the deluge of calls one might expect to an electric train company at Christmas. Peace on earth?