Toy Train Repair Hall of SHAME

[Terry]

While fixing trains I am amazed at some of the repairs I see.

I had a KW transformer a few years back that had a new cord installed. A soldierless repair. They stripped the original cord and tied the wires to the ends of new cord. Then wrfapped the whole mess up with Scotch tape!

I just had a soldierless ZW that used crimp connectors on the stubs of the original cord a few weeks ago that got me started on doing a thread with pictures.

Then I just opened this one up last night. This guy had a soldiering iron, but left the original cord end there. The brown one is the new one, the original black one has some tape wrapped around it. This is a postwar SW transformer.

 

 

 

A few years ago I had a Lionel Standard gauge 10 loco with WOODEN wheels. There was a wire out the back to get ground from the next car. The guy was a paperboy in the 1950s who liked standard gauge. He painted everything silver, and made it run. He said he made the wheels in shop class with a lathe.

[rogruth]

None of that sounds like the way to go to me.
My question is were they working before you fixed them?

[Terry]

It's not the way to go. These are examples of people fixing trains in odd ways.

The transformers may have worked, but I don't test them until I see the insides. The wood standard gauge wheels were warped and broken so I never tried them.

[starfire700]

Here is a ZW fix that you won't find in any repair manual.
I had one with the LH throttles  not working. Inspection inside showed that 2 ground lugs had become disconnected, possibly from over-tightening the thumb nuts.
To get it working on all 4 quickly, I removed all 4 thumb nuts, found that a small Erector girder had the exact right hole spacing to fit over all 4 terminal screws, then re-installed the nuts. It works fine as long as all the nuts, especially the ones not in use, are kept hand-tight.