What funny thing has happened on your layout?

On my old layout I was testing to see if a grade was too steep and forgot the line ended at the far end of a bridge.  Yep...the engine did a slow, picturesque swan dive 4' down to the basement floor.   At least I had the sense to use a conventional PRR Flyer  instead of one of my more expensive command control engines.  I had to laugh.

-Greg

Not sure how funny it is but... my 3 year old granddaughter took it upon herself to rename the layout "Choo-Choo Land". Didn't occur to her to ask me first. It's OK. Can't imagine what I would have come up with at the same age.

The funny thing about my layout is that I have not started it yet !

One day I went down to train room and every little person was headless, it seems my cat loved biting the heads off of all the residents of my layout. She never bothered anything else but she had a thing for the figures. 

  A few months ago my water tower was on my bed as I woke.

   I haven't done any sleepwalking since I was a kid, but with the stress of the last few years being released last year, I'm actually having dreams again too, so I blew it off as that; too groggy to recall.

  Then a tree showed up in bed.

Then a whole train was tipped over on the layout. I attributed that to an argument with a border.

  Then I caught this guy on the back of the couch that is butted up against the layout. He brings things gently to ask me before chewing. Yelling that's mine is all it took. He slunk down and asked for a milk bone instead.  He is back to asking for cardboard boxes, pop & water bottles. Just to put the "gentle" bit in perspective, this minibike tire was shredded in under twenty minutes last year, and he can pull an inflated tire from a hand dolly in under two minutes. Right off the rim!

Whats really funny is he is usually a clumsy brute. A solid 140lb+, "I don't know my own strength", goofball, that was almost nammed "Lenny" (mice&men)(&Apollo).

   But he was too smart for all that nonsense, he was Puppy. And still is "Puppi" also known as "Sandlot dog" to the neighborhood, but is a very happy and social "puppy" that likes hugs (that is unusual for an adult male dog to seek out hugs) (he jumped the fence tonight, and sat at the corner alone before crossing. I spotted him fast and just watched..."I win"...and he, for the first time in near two months, had to lay down for a while on his yard tether after he came sneaking back into the yards needed to get home (15min). Been training him to sit & wait for the RR crossing bells, then go straight home just incase too. No excitement allowed there, made sure its boring for him. Fingers crossed that he just stays. At 3yrs now, he should be settling down finally and has already stopped going far at full speed during "breakouts" Sorry, had to brag because I'm so happy he sat to cross in my absence.

  His dad pulled wires down from underneath once while running. I was confused and looked down to the fuses. There he was and the look on his face told me I didn't need to yell. He got at least 12vac & didn't enjoy it.

I miss him watching trains with me, he really enjoyed it. He would follow me when I had one in hand too, like in this shot. (ok still, just gone from here, 2 males=trouble. {none are MY dogs, I'm just "that" sucker})

Only one engine has ever derailed and fallen off my ceiling's shelf layout.

  It seldom has issues outside of cars derailing and snagging the whole train to an emergency stop. Then, if in a tight curve it flops because of a near 5" draw bar (wire that lassos a coupler tack). But it tracks well all things considered. I didn't run in on the shelf fearing in would dive, but let my guard down for a night. On the smoothest straight I own, it climbed the rails and.dove.

I guess it decided it could fly? I don't know what got into it .

*The Great Ga-lue, the bringer of life, had mercy and it still lives on today...(*hot glue) (and thanks to GRJ, it smokes a room out in minutes too, lol.)

I had a cloud burst over one of my towns while I was working on the layout. Came to find out my 7 year old daughter did not close the shower curtain correctly on the first floor... fastest I have moved in years!

Nothing that Mr. Murphy cannot correct

When we put the gerbil in a boxcar.  That got hectic in a hurry.  I couldn't  stop laughing, but Gerbie might have got a bit traumatized.  My son wasn't real happy about the result either.  In retrospect, that probably wasn't a good idea.  It was funny though.

Used surplus telephone wire, very thin 4-conductor, for all the turnout motors and they worked fine, even the one 40 feet away from the controller.  Used 22ga for the last four and didn't see any difference in function between them.

One of my cats "marked" (peed on) an O22 switch controller along with a 12" level, and a package of some crimp-on connectors in the same general vicinity.  Come to think of it it wasn't that funny.  Nevermind.

Pete

ps - I cured him off the train table by running the train when I caught him up there and blowing the whistle.  Hasn't been up there in a while, have to see how long that lasts, though.

We had a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner. My HO Scale layout was on the floor at the time, and the Roomba had got into my room somehow when we weren't home. I had a Nickel Plate Road freight train with Berkshire 763 at the head end set up when I left. When came home, the entire train was on its side, and the wires connecting the tender to the locomotive were broke, immobilizing my Berkshire. So not that funny, but it happened.

I have a long tunnel in the back of the layout that is a series of upside down cardboard boxes covered with Lifelike 'hill' paper. A few weeks ago, I took Ivor the Engine out to stretch his legs and as he steamed full bore into one end of the tunnel, the other end exploded into the air as the smallest cat who unbeknownst to me had been sleeping in that box leaped away, landing on a Viking ship model (don't ask) that scared her even more, as the oar banks flew everywhere, then scrambling straight through Pugh's Pit - a mining operation - knocking over a train of ore cars and the #96 coal elevator, spraying black aquarium rocks all over the place as she rocketed up the basement stairs. 

Don't think she'll be in the basement anytime soon.

I had just acquired a Postwar 746. Had her on her inaugural run pulling a full 2500 series set of extruded aluminum passenger cars and matching baggage car. While successful at making the run, I quickly decided that she needed a little bit more care than the simple lube job just performed and so I removed the shell and worked on neatening up the wiring, replacing the bulb, cleaning the smoke unit, and taking care of the gearbox. All set and done, I set her on the tracks and what do ya know - all my work was in vain - now she couldn't pull the consists that she was pulling earlier! I was miffed  ! What had I done wrong? TLC couldn't have made things worse here...

Come to find out that in my excitement to view my results, I forgot that the weight of the shell factored in to pulling power. As soon as I realized that, the shell was placed back on and she is nice little steamy brute!

I have a cat that when I had my layout use to come into the room and ever so carefully would lay in the middle of the layout and watch the trains well I wasn't paying attention to her one day and then I called her and ( by the way she is solid black) she came out from one of the tunnels covered in cobwebs, boy did I laugh at the appearance of her. 

Bet i'm not the only one to crawl under layout then coming back out thinking my coconut was clear of it.

J Daddy posted:

I had a cloud burst over one of my towns while I was working on the layout. Came to find out my 7 year old daughter did not close the shower curtain correctly on the first floor... fastest I have moved in years!

When you gotta move you gotta move.

rtraincollector posted:

I have a cat that when I had my layout use to come into the room and ever so carefully would lay in the middle of the layout and watch the trains well I wasn't paying attention to her one day and then I called her and ( by the way she is solid black) she came out from one of the tunnels covered in cobwebs, boy did I laugh at the appearance of her. 

When I lived in a mobel home a few years ago.I had the trains out on the floor running.Well I had my Mth mountain type pulling a freight.As the track went behind a couch.Cat decide to nap there on the track.Well as the train went behind the couch.The cat jump up about 4 feet with its legs running in mid air.Reminded me of some of the saturday morning cartoons I watched as a kid.

Dieseler posted:

Bet i'm not the only one to crawl under layout then coming back out thinking my coconut was clear of it.

That's a good bet.  I do this all the time ... and I howl like nobody's business every time it happens. 

Steven J. Serenska

Here's a story that I enjoy telling.

When I was a teenager, probably about 15, my 175 Rocket Launcher was placed on my layout immediately next to the Plasticville Cathedral.  In front of the cathedral, I staged a wedding scene with a pastor marrying a bride and groom in front of a few well-dressed attendees.  There was a large green "cast-iron" fence separating the Rocket Launcher from the church grounds.

One day, my father asked me to show a family friend my layout.  As was my habit, I ran the trains for a while and then went around the layout showing off all the postwar accessories.  I would always end with the rocket launcher because it's always good for a few chuckles.

On this particular session, the rocket was launched, ricocheted off the basement rafters, and came down and completely took out the groom in my wedding scene.

My father and his friend both laughed hysterically and clapped my shoulder and said a few easy jokes like "Son, let this be a warning to you about what can happen when you decide to get married...".  

It's a very fond memory for me.

Steven J. Serenska

Come to think of it I had a derailment in a long tunnel on a curve on the layout some time ago.

Went to a train show few months after and I was going to buy a scale Lionel 50 ft GN box car... I thought to myself wait you have one of these. What happened to it?.. Well I was having another running session and had a similar derailment (from the same bad order car) and opened up the access hole to the tunnel and there she was lying on its side!...

I should have check with my conductor first... he is good at counting the cars.

My layout is in the corner of the living room, a couple feet away from either wall. I have a stack of boxes (train stuff) in  the corner behind the layout and our tomcat Socks (tabby with four white feet) likes to nap on a pillow on top of the boxes. He loves bacon. The first time I tried some bacon scented smoke fluid was something else. I was running two trains both filled the magic elixir and they were warming up nicely. As the smoke began to fill the air, so did the scent of frying bacon. Soon old Socks poked his head up with his nose twitching. I thought he would jump up on the layout to look for bacon, but he didn't. Instead he jumped down, scooted under the layout and made a beeline for the kitchen. I thought that was odd until he came skulking back into the living room looking so sad. Then I realized what had happened. He knows where bacon comes from. It comes off the stove and onto the kitchen island. Even though he smelled it, there was none to be found! Poor little kitty cat. The smell of fresh cooked bacon in the air and none for him to eat!  

I fixed the cat on the layout problem with the TMCC Marines missile launch set.  A couple broadsides with a missile and the cat was off upstairs like a rocket the second it heard, 'scanning for targets'.  That was pretty funny.

OK, lemme 'splain:

This (below) was taken in 2000 or so on my layout, before the backdrop, the dirt on the ground, "finishing" the engine house, the removal of that funky spur and the installation of my classification yard, which replaced the abyss into which the loco is staring.

I run TMCC, but this scratch bashed Williams loco was not upgraded, and was hidden on a long siding after some testing a few days earlier. So - on went the command 18 volts.

Away went the Wms diesel (hated that start-in-FWD business) at God's Own Speed. I heard it and I knew where it was heading. I managed to leap to the power strip, then killed the current, and waited for the crash to the floor. Silence. I turned to look and there it was. Just like you see it. I got my (film!) camera and took a shot. I did not set up this photo. 

The loco was a Williams (pre-WBB) "scale" (they're not really) GE Dash-9 that I had bashed into a GE C39 narrow-nose with the cool low cab and big shoulders. Lots of sawing and gluing (I do few diesels); the modified cab is from a Lionel shell of some sort. I modified the truck side frames a bit, and the radiators. Enlarged the fuel tank to scale width/depth. Frame-mounted pilots.

Never was real happy with it (oh, those handrails); didn't TMCC-it. Sold it to a friend years ago who wanted The Only One. Going to do it again one day, but starting with an MTH narrow-nose GE. 

Probably for me, it was running a 75 car scale sized freight train on one of the outside tracks at the Paradise and Pacific Railroad in Scottsdale.  It is a great track for long trains because of the minimal grades and broad curves.  It had been running all day just fine until somewhere around the 150th axle, it decided to split a switch with cars going everywhere all of a sudden. 

Needless to say the club train running on outside track 1, hit the pileup full speed around the same time.  Most prototypical wreck I had.

The tough part was needing the grabber to pull all the debris off the track over the outside glass that is nearly as tall as I am.  No damage to anything but my ego!

Well, there was the time an Arttista priest, an Arttista minister and an Arttista rabbi walked into a ....

If youda had a nun, I woulda put my money on her.

That's a good one D500.  There was several times I didn't take an engine out of train (lashup) mode, made a new train with the same number, and when I started the new train, the other engine started because it was still in the consist, and ran over tracks and shorted out the layout.  Sometimes hitting a train in transit.  Not that funny maybe.  Just careless.  Frantic gerbils are much funnier.

D500 posted:

OK, lemme 'splain:

This (below) was taken in 2000 or so on my layout, before the backdrop, the dirt on the ground, "finishing" the engine house, the removal of that funky spur and the installation of my classification yard, which replaced the abyss into which the loco is staring.

I run TMCC, but this scratch bashed Williams loco was not upgraded, and was hidden on a long siding after some testing a few days earlier. So - on went the command 18 volts.

Away went the Wms diesel (hated that start-in-FWD business) at God's Own Speed. I heard it and I knew where it was heading. I managed to leap to the power strip, then killed the current, and waited for the crash to the floor. Silence. I turned to look and there it was. Just like you see it. I got my (film!) camera and took a shot. I did not set up this photo. 

The loco was a Williams (pre-WBB) "scale" (they're not really) GE Dash-9 that I had bashed into a GE C39 narrow-nose with the cool low cab and big shoulders. Lots of sawing and gluing (I do few diesels); the modified cab is from a Lionel shell of some sort. I modified the truck side frames a bit, and the radiators. Enlarged the fuel tank to scale width/depth. Frame-mounted pilots.

Never was real happy with it (oh, those handrails); didn't TMCC-it. Sold it to a friend years ago who wanted The Only One. Going to do it again one day, but starting with an MTH narrow-nose GE. 

Yowwsa!!That was real closse.Talk about being on the edge of your seat!!On my floor layout running a fast freight.I noticed that the train was now shorter.I leaped to the transformer and cut the power.The locomotive had hit the caboose.But because I cut the power.It just tapped the caboose this time.Not even a derailment just a slit push.Other times I was not fast enough.And the results lead to having the clean up crew come in.

mike.caruso posted:

Well, there was the time an Arttista priest, an Arttista minister and an Arttista rabbi walked into a ....

Which one had the parrot on his shoulder?

Was running an Allegheny/35 coal hopper consist.Somehow a switch was thrown that I did not notice.The entire train High Balled into my Declassification yard.Talk about a Train Wreck?Nick