My own worst enemy

Warning: boring train talk ahead...

Over the weekend, I decided to take care of some items that were not necessary, but had bugged me all the same. I repainted some of the rock facings to look more like rock and less like painted plaster, with varying degrees of success.

The other job I tried to take care of was upgrading the headlights on a couple of the Locomotives, which are dim or not working. I got a couple of them changed without too much trouble on the D&H Alco PA, so I was feeling bold and took on the biggest challenge, pictured above:

The light is mounted on a pc board inside, and several internet searches hadn't turned up much more than this fact and a couple of diagrams, but no advice on how to change the light itself. I figured I'd at least try to get a look at it so I could see what I needed for the job. So I removed the 2 screws holding the body on and...after 10 minutes of prying, I had succeeded in nothing other than snapping off a couple of the smaller plastic details on the body. I decided to quit while it was still in one piece.

The front wheels highlighted above were the hard bit. The 2 front axles are mounted on an independent assembly. This attaches to the loco by a screw, that fits inside a spring that allows the wheels some up/down travel. Think a 1/87 scale shock absorber. You can imagine how small these parts are.

After finding where the spring had bounced off to (twice), I went to put the assembly back on. I found that the wheels were now hovering about 1/8" above the track. I tried backing out the screw, thinking I had simply overtightened it. This lowered the wheels to the track, but on the test runs they were so loose that they would jump off the track at the slightest chance. After messing with it for an hour, I gave up, and resigned myself to having ruined one of my favorite pieces.

I decided to give it another look last night...I took it apart and looked it over...after a few minutes I realized I had put the wheel assembly back on upside down, which made all the difference.

So to make a long story short, I wound up back where I started. But at least it runs as well as it did before I started messing with it.