Disaster! Averted..

[scruff]

The other week I treated myself to the Farish collectors club limited edition class 08 shunter , I'm not a member so was well chuffed with my acquisition. I left it in the box after a brief inspection and was happy . But.. then I noticed it was missing one of the front end handrails and that grated because suddenly the missing handrail had lights and sirens on it to me ..

So.. I made a replacement handrail from an old guitar string and set about fitting it and that's when it all went wrong The other handrail fell off I thought, "oh well, two to fit, can't be that bad"..  Then the steps fell off.   So.. I thought I'll take a break from it.. have a cuppa and go back and fix it.. 

I did this, then picked the loco up.. to see what needed to be done.. and the steps and handrails on the opposite side fell off in my hand

I then found that using my handheld magnifier wasn't helping matters but it was all I had and in the end I decided to put it away and sort it another day. 

But.. Yesterday we went shopping and Maplins is next to the pound shop so me and SWMBO wandered in there and walked out with a rather large desk mounted magnifier  as soon as I got home I got the shunter out and lo and behold all the steps and handrails were back on in about an hour! 

Just thought I'd share this to show not everything in the hobby goes smoothly..

Whats your worst disaster?

Cheers
Mark

[Tank]

   I'm glad to hear that there was a happy ending! 

[Michael Shillabeer]

Glad you sorted your 08 out Mark

My worst disaster in N was melting the front of a Langley diesel loco (class 24?)

I was using regular 60:40 solder on white-metal though... I rebuilt the front with more solder filed to shape

I've now use various low temperature solders!

Best regards
Michael

[scotsoft]

I can't say I have had any major disasters but I do find when I am repairing a loco etc. and finding it is getting me frustrated, the best thing to do is to go and have a cuppa away from the repair then go back to it.  Quite often that little break has calmed me down and I get on with the repair.

Having a decent illuminated magnifier does help as well as having the right tools for the job in hand 

It is good to read you have been successful with your 08, one of my favourite UK locos 

cheers John.

[Malc]

I bought a BnSf Swoosh, it looked fantastic, so put it on the track and started it off, slowly. It got half way round my layout and when it was on the far side, decided it didn't like set track points. It gently derailed and slowly rolled off the layout. It was too far over to reach, so I had to sit and watch it plunge to the floor. Fortunately, underneath it were the remains of some carpet that I had been laying, which cushioned the blow, so only the front coupling went west. I have now scrapped that layout and started again with Kato track.