Christmas trains - Part II

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Posted by Jim on Dec 11, 2006 68 views

Monday - I call Sattler’s in Westmont and they specialize in HO, not Lionel. They have some pieces but not everything I would need.

I check Google for Cherry Hill trains and find Paul’s train repairs. He works out of a basement office across the street from our church. He is on the way to the dentist but will be back after 3:30. At the end of the day, Anna and I run over. Nice guy, small shop, but a ton of work goes on in this place. Had a great chat session with the other 2 customers.

This is the first time the engine has been powered up. As Paul puts it on the track he says, “these things are solid, it will work fine” And it does. Then with reverse power it sits there
After some fiddling and testing, we find that the reversing unit and the auto sensor are broke. You have to put the train in forward and not touch the reverse on button on the bottom of the engine. If you do, it will not work until you cycle it through Forward - Neutral - Reverse a few times.

I need to bring the engine back here after the holidays to get repaired. He does not have the part, and is swamped with work anyway. He recommends I go to Rancocas and get the stuff I need up there. My mother and step-father are coming over for dinner, so Anna refuses to drive the 5 minutes to Rancocas. I offer to go with Russel but he says it is too far. Must be tough getting old, forgetting the fun of hoping in the car on the Christmas season in heavy traffic to buy that one piece of junk to put under the tree Thats why I do all my shopping at the last minute every year.

I need to do a bit of me and train history one day. A cool feature of WordPress I found is the drafts - blog entries that I start sit in the page reminding me to finish them. I have a lot of stub ideas I will be jotting down this way