Bigholed on the Plywood Empire Route!

Never had a running engine pick up a screw.   I've found the magnatraction truck is handy for storage of screws during disassembly.  

Ha!  I sure have.  It is a shocking event the first time it happens.  Lew's description is perfect; the entire train stopped as if it had hit a stone cliff head-on.  Sure enough, just a tiny machine screw with a death grip on the gears of a side-geared power truck did it. 

Jim Barrett posted:

Ha!  I sure have.  It is a shocking event the first time it happens.  Lew's description is perfect; the entire train stopped as if it had hit a stone cliff head-on.  Sure enough, just a tiny machine screw with a death grip on the gears of a side-geared power truck did it. 

My experience was with a little piece of ballast and side-geared RS-3 teeth, many years ago. That thing just stopped.

About 10 years ago, my Magnetraction Warhorse J picked up a dropped thumbtack from a thumbtack coupler (never did find the car that was missing one...) and all of a sudden wouldn't run over switches except at the speed of light (SOP for that thing, anyway - it's been benched) without stalling. Turned it over and saw that the M'traction had picked the tack up and jammed it in one of the roller pickup arms, keeping the roller off the track, and giving the loco a single pickup.

I had this happen to an MTH diesel, except that it was a tiny piece of ground foam in the drive gears. I had to take off the shell and run the flywheel to get it out. Took a while to figure it out, as it was hardly visible.