Office of the General Manager
100 Railroad Avenue
Monetesano, Washington
CIRCULAR NUMBER: 10 DATE: January 1, 1955
S.B.Clinard
President and General Manager ___________________________________________________________________________________
This circular explains the trials and trubulations of Railroad Modeling in a humorous way. When you complete this tutorial you should have a good working knowledge of potential modeling hazards!
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1) Everything will work flawlessly UNTIL there is an open house.
2) Within minutes of saying "No one will notice that", someone notices it.
3) Xacto Knives have a thirst for human blood.
4) Only ten percent of time previously set aside exclusively for layout work will be spent exclusively on the layout.
5) As soon as the budget expands to accommodate the next vital piece of the project, the price will go up.
6) The highest degree of meticulous planning and preparation stands no chance against one moment of bad luck.
7) When called to task, one will always forget Murphy's Laws until the opportunity to avert disaster has passed.
8) There is nothing more painful on this earth then a rail joiner shoved knuckle deep up under your fingernail, and the chances of you laying any significant amount of rail without this occurring are virtually nil.
9) (a) No matter how carefully you measure your track plan, when it comes time to build your layout you will find that one crucial measurement is off by at least 3 inches.
(b) If you need a Left Hand switch, your Local Hobby Store will only have Right Hand switches (and vice versa).
(c) If you think you have wired the track correctly reverse the wires. It will run correctly now.
(d) No matter how well laid the track is - a steam engine or six axle engine will always find the flaw.
(e) The smaller the part, the greater the distance it will sproing from betwixt your tweezers - so go to the furthest point from your workbench and crawl your way back.
10)(a) Any turnout not fully thrown will find the most expensive car/engine to derail. Thus ALWAYS throwing said piece to the nearest piece of concrete.
(b) No matter how well padded/carpeted the show floor is, any descending piece of equipment will find the barest portions of said floor.
11)(a) Want the manufacturers to produce a specific engine or freight car ??? Spend countless hours and dollars and scratch build one. Just as the finishing touches are drying up, someone will announce an exact match to what you want coming out next month. Twice the quality and half the price as the one you've just spent the last six months on !!!! -
(b) Two weeks after finishing that scratch built boxcar, Accurail will have come out with it for $9.95.
12)(a) Super Glue and fingers must have a love affair.
(b) Glue no matter how sparingly applied will always glue fingers together.
(c) Hot glue will always seek the shortest path from the point of application to your nearest finger.
13)(a) Only 3 out of 4 legs of the train table reach the floor. Corollary: turning the table only changes which 3.
(b) The number of rail joiners you have on hand is always less than you need to finish.
(c) The "slightly too long" switch machine mounting screw, driven upward from below, will surface directly under a point hinge.
(d) The wood screws are always in the wrong place. They gravitate to future stream beds and gullies.
(e) The tool you thought you lost will reappear when you return from the hardware store with a new one.
14)(a) Regardless of the size of your work bench, you will never have more than 18X12 inches of space to work within
(b) Clutter expands to fill all available space.
(c) The extension cord you bought will be 6" too short for the job you had in mind, even though you measured it, twice!
(d) After planning diligently all of the new benchwork, and purchasing all the materials, as soon as you begin construction you will remember that the dimensions in "dimensional lumber" are, in fact, approximate. Apparently so is the concept of "quality control" to the mill.
15)(a) No matter the depth of your research, some geek will quickly point out that such-and-such herald wasn't in use until 6 months after the period you are modeling. And then proceed to remind everyone about that fact for rest of your (or his) lifetime.
(b) If you model the late steam era, some well-meaning relative will gift you with an articulated container carrier. If, OTOH, your locos all have ditch lights, that same relative will present you with a bright yellow 1920-era Old Dutch Cleanser double-sheathed wood box car.
(c) After months of searching, you finally find and purchase that special something on eBay, only to see another pop up and sell for much less the following week. (So naturally you buy that one so you feel better about the average cost of both)
16)(a) The chances of that freshly painted project landing painted side up on the carpet is directly proportionate to the cost of the carpet and the difficulty of the paint job to reproduce.
(b) No matter how well painted, your thumbprint will always end up on the model somewhere
(c) Masking an air brushing project takes 10 times as long as the painting
(d) The more complex the masking, the higher the probability of a color leak - even if you repeat the last color to seal the tape.
(e) At some point during your painting session, you will discover that you've been rinsing the paintbrush in your coffee, rather than the water.
(f) When you open the paint bottle of the most important color, you find it has gone solid or to jell even though it looks perfect.
Corollary:
(1) You discover this just in time NOT to make it to the LHS before it closes
(2) If you planned to work on the project on a long weekend .. need I say it.. LHS has just sold out of that color
(3) LHS has just put in their order, so you have to wait for their next ordering cycle
(4) If it is a little used color, it's also back-ordered at Walthers, Horizon, etc...
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