A Blessing in Disguise?

After not running trains in months, I decided to spend a rainy afternoon doing just that. And things did not go smoothly. There were a whole lot of derailments and shorts and other issues. But the worst was when I ran my I1 into a turnout set against it and fried the decoder.

Suffice to say I was not happy. The stream of obsenities that left my mouth sounded like a Lenny Bruce routine. I set the locomotive on my display and went about running some other stuff. Eventually I got the layout's creeks worked out and things ran smoothly.

Once I cooled off, I realized maybe this wasn't such a bad thing. First off, if any decoder was going to get fried, better the cheapie DZ-126 in the I1 than one of the expensive sound decoders in my BLI locos. It could've been worse, right?

Second, I realized this is an opportunity to do things right. The initial decoder install on this beast was a nightmare. It took me a good two weeks of tinkering to get the locomotive to do one lap around the layout without derailing. A big reason for that is the wires running from the tender to the loco are too stiff. I plan to replace them with more flexible wire that's colored black.

While I'm replacing the decoder, I plan to make some other upgrades. Chief among them is replacing the tender trucks with Bachmanns, which feature all-wheel pickup. Right now, the drivers pick up power from one rail and the tender wheels pick up power from the other. As such the locomotive has a tendency to stall on turnouts, even with powered frogs!

And as long as I'm replacing the decoder, why not go all out and add sound? This will be a nice upgrade.

I wouldn't be making these upgrades had I not fried the decoder to begin with! So maybe this is a blessing in disguise. The accident forced me to quit kicking the can down the road.

In other news, I've published my first eBook. If you're wondering what I've been spending my spare time on while I'm not working on the layout (or burning up DCC decoders), this it. So now, I'm oing to try and sell you something. If you buy my book for the low, low price of $1, you'll get to read a really cool story and you'll help finance further layout construction. Check it out:

Multiple formats including Amazon Kindle can be found here:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/821410

And you Nook users can get it here:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cataloosa-island-alden-bauers/1128568803?ean=2940155234418

Hope you all enjoy.