# That smell of something burning....



## Mr.Buchholz (Dec 30, 2011)

Years back, when my father, grandfather and I set up my first HO scale layout, I had on my railroad three CN locomotives, all F7 as far as I can recall. The railroad ran well for sometime, the layout eventually being populated by army men and military vehicles and such.

Then one day, I was running the 15-car train when I started to smell something burning on the railroad. The power was connected properly, there were no loose connections. I didn't see any evidence of sparking on the tracks either.
The train kept going around, so I went and got my dad to make sure I wasn't going nuts. He came and checked everything, and couldn't find out the problem.

Shortly thereafter, the smell became more prevalent, and smoke began trailing the loco. Flames happened as I brought it to a stop, and we shut down the railroad and put out the now-charred loco. It was too messed up to save my dad said, so we cleaned the tracks and ran the train again with another loco. Within a few minutes, same problem. This time we caught it fast and saved the loco. A rail caught fire on the third run, so my dad shut it all down and dismantled it, checked every part of it, but couldn't find the issue.

We talked about this a few years back when I started to build my current layout, and still to this day couldn't figure out what happened.

Any thoughts on this?

-J.


----------



## norgale (Apr 4, 2011)

You let the magic smoke out and that's a bad thing. Pete


----------



## Brakeman Jake (Mar 8, 2009)

This is a tough one indeed that will likely remain a mystery.The only sure thing is that the layout was a fire hazard should it have been left unattended even for a short while.I'm actually building mine and taking a lot of care to do it right but still,I've made it a personal law...never leave a live layout unattended no matter how well it's built.


----------



## Guest (Sep 11, 2012)

You said "years back", so are to assume it might have been 15-20 yrs??? Maybe the locos were the cheap bachmann, tyco types with the pancake motors? Are we safe to assume also since they might have been that type, that maybe the power supply was the cheap kind also??
The current draw for that type of loco pulling 15 cars would have been alot of strain on the power supply and the motor.
So we can only draw the conclusion of overheating the motors in the locos.
Maybe I'll quit "assuming" now...lol


----------



## Big Ed (Jun 16, 2009)

I don't know what happened but you should have saved the burned trains they would look good in a scrap yard.

I watched some burned Lionel stuff on e bay sell for more then a good one would have sold for.

The burned stuff would have brought a lot of money had they been in good shape as they were some hard to find items and a lot of prewar trains.

Even so some of the burned stuff brought more then I would have payed if they were not burnt. I am talking hundreds, some over $500 too, for burned trains.


----------



## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

big ed said:


> I don't know what happened but you should have saved the burned trains they would look good in a scrap yard.
> 
> I watched some burned Lionel stuff on e bay sell for more then a good one would have sold for.
> 
> ...


It's easy for me to burn a few for you if you'll make an advance payment.


----------



## Big Ed (Jun 16, 2009)

gunrunnerjohn said:


> It's easy for me to burn a few for you if you'll make an advance payment.



I doubt if you had any of the stuff he was selling.

Most was pre war and old what a shame they got caught up in a fire.
I think I posted the link back then here showing some.

They were listed as "great if your making a nuclear blast scene" something like that.


----------



## Mr.Buchholz (Dec 30, 2011)

big ed said:


> I don't know what happened but you should have saved the burned trains they would look good in a scrap yard.


I honestly have no idea what happened to my original trains. The railroad was dismantled, and all the stuff put into one big box. I lost track of what happened to that box after a couple of moves, and that was the end of it.

I had a lot of cool rolling stock in that set too.

-J.


----------



## Southern (Nov 17, 2008)

My gess is that the transformer had an overvoltage problem.


----------



## D1566 (Jun 8, 2012)

Sounds like a short between the two halves of the transformer - which would be unusual ...


----------



## Brakeman Jake (Mar 8, 2009)

I thought of this too,but then wouldn't the locos have been uncontrollable?In DC,more voltage automatically translates into more speed that I know of.My theory is that may be the controller had a rectifier problem and allowed some AC to mix with the track DC,but don't really know if this is possible at all and what would be the result if it was.An electrical engineer could probably tell.


----------



## Reckers (Oct 11, 2009)

It was obviously sabotage...some jealous fool who only had a slot-car set.


----------



## broox (Apr 13, 2012)

we had a brand new piece of track that was dodgy. the piece that the power plugs into. on the back there was a bit of solder hanging out one side of the connector and touched another metal bit.

caught it in time, no damaged locos. just a bit of magic blue smoke.

might still have a pic of it. i'll look tonight


----------



## Mr.Buchholz (Dec 30, 2011)

Reckers said:


> It was obviously sabotage...some jealous fool who only had a slot-car set.


:lol_hitting:





-J.


----------



## Reckers (Oct 11, 2009)

Go get'm, Buchholz!!!!


----------

