Hi, reading Ray's post "damaged turnout" I thought I put my 2 cents on the world wide media.

yesterday I've spent 10 1/2 hours fixing things but not I've accidentally ruined or broken, first of all its the ICE (original 3371) , I think it was the ever best design Märklin did however over a period of time by taken the coaches apart and pushing them together again the electrical coupling has suffered from.
there are 9 thin layers of electrical contact strips and in 1 strip came loose enough to be pushed back and not receiving the vital contact it needs, so every time the ICE turned at a curved section 1 of the motorcars stopped working., another problem was there are 4 round pegs to guide each coach together (2 on each coach) and than at the bottom there is a hook with a tension spring which holds the coaches together. after several attempts to fix it the result was "O".
the next move was to add a tiny bit of superglue behind the strip push the strip down on its backing and wait a few seconds, I then filed the contact surface slightly to remove any residue from the glue and put them all back together and it worked. "Hurray". and after a few trips through the mountains it appeared to hold.
my next task was to try out my Roco BLS Re 486 (video under "My layout" and see how the Roco pantograph performs, excellent except one spot on the layout, underneath the castle, I've already partly removed the castle before and fixed some of the overhead wire but this was the next track, worked alright with other locos but not this one., I finished up replacing a whole section with great difficulties (lack of free space) and had another go with the same loco but found out quickly the pantograph wasn't right for the job, so I've finished up replacing it with a Sommerfeld which I bought recently., this also wasn't a straight forward replacement job, the new pantograph didn't fit 100 % into the old configuration, drilled a new hole into the roof which was ok one doesn't see it because this is where the pantograph gets secured with a screw. i had some insulators which came with the new pantograph but they were to high so I left the original isolators on the roof, after several trials and errors I've managed to secure the pantograph succesfully and it worked ok straight away but no this is not the end, had the loco running previously successfully around the layout except the one section but now the front coupling caught the middle stud at a turnout, not noticing it was an electrical coupling I've pulled it out and ripped the wires which in the end I've just cut away and than finally at 10.30 pm I was able to run the loco faultlessly and I thought it was a simple job at 12.00 am just to fix the electrical on the ICE.

these pantographs may look authentic but useless when you try to operate a loco with its pantographs up, the wiper itself isn't up to the job.

In the end I was pleased a.) I've found a potential hazard under the castle, b.) I've managed to fix the ICE, c.) fixed the overhead wires, d.) got the BLS loco going without a hitch.
Just another day at the office

John

Edited by user 01 November 2018 07:28:40(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified