Have you ever had that awful moment when that rivet you cannot replace pings off into oblivion? We have laminate flooring, which we thought would make things easy, but we still lose small items and never find them again.
This happened to me when I attempted to modify the Fiddletown and Copperopolis chassis to fit under James Hilton's lovely Hungarian Gmeinder kit. Removing the steam motion and just leaving the single rod joining the driving wheels meant that I had to take out a rivet, shorten it and then replace it into the counterweight. Of course it happened - on the umpteenth attempt, when it had almost worked, the thing pinged off and was lost. Probably some Borrower under the floorboards now has a shiny new hatstand.
The next part of the tale was a little disappointing in a different way. Minitrains is a favoured supplier of the OO9 Society and rightly so as they do produce some excellent locos. However, when I wrote an honest email to them and offered to pay for a replacement rivet this was just ignored. If this loco had been from the major supplier, such as Bachmann and Heljan or even Hornby then parts would have been forthcoming and in some cases free of charge. I know that Mintrains is not in the same league but a little customer support would not go amiss.
Call me stupid or profligate with the readies, but I forked out for a second loco just for the flaming rivets. I am sure lots of people will tell me now how I can get rivets to fit but that is not the point - a manufacturer surely can give a little help. After all, they know that us OO9ers often want to base a loco on one of their chassis.
I was not going to let the same thing happen again and so my solution was to do the tricky bits inside a plastic bag. Imagine me at this point looking like a Porton Down scientist wearing rubber gloves (to keep the humidity down that will fog up the plastic bag) with Lyn holding the chassis and me fiddling inside the bag trying to juggle Loctite, the motion bar and the rivet and a pair of pliers. It does give a new meaning to Fiddletown and Copperopolis doesn't it?
I am pleased to say that we finally managed to sort out those rivets and I have a working chassis and am building the loco. The cost though has been twice what I wanted to pay. It is just a pity that this has happened when we all spend so much with this company.
Ouch!
Sorry to read your tale Jim and not a good PR hit for Andreas if Minitrains don't respond to customers. I understand that despite the apparent size of the company, it is actually a one man band with a part time office bod, so without wishing to defend the firm as I have no connection nor have I had any dealings, it could be possible that your email landed in an unmanned office, or I wonder if it was missent? this does happen now and again.
Anyway, as you now own a rivet that has cost
Thanks for the thoughts Mick.
The second chassis has become a donor and I now have a fully working NS3 which I am currently painting and detailing. Rather expensive at
I have found a possible source for the motion rivets - RT Models sell packs of 10
It is a bit late now but one tip I picked up from a watchmaker was to have a sort of bib arrangement between yourself and the work bench.
This can be made from an old sheet that clips under the workbench and in to your collar or work apron forming a sort of trough between the bench and yourself.
Although it will not stop items that fly off into orbit it will catch items that fall off the front of the workbench saving them from being eaten by the well known carpet monster!
Brian Meldon
Sounds fine Brian - until you get up to answer the door and forget to 'unplug' yourself, sending your latest model crashing to the floor in a shower of open glue & paint bottles, tins of odds n ends, plus all the small parts kept safely in that plastic container etc. :-)
Not only me then!!! :
Steve
Quote from: DeadHorse on October 12, 2016, 21:33
Sounds fine Brian - until you get up to answer the door and forget to 'unplug' yourself, sending your latest model crashing to the floor in a shower of open glue & paint bottles, tins of odds n ends, plus all the small parts kept safely in that plastic container etc. :-)
A good and valid point!
However I have not had that problem as my workbench is fixed and quite solid so all that happens if I get up too quick and forget to take it off is that I rip the cloth of the 'bib'.
Brian meldon
Well, I have now 'upgraded' to a larger plastic bag as one side of the loco has lost its pins again. Luckily we caught them and it was before it went into service. The outfit with larger bag will be utilised to re-install said rivets and connecting rod but this time with superglue.
At least I cannot pull everything off the table using this method but I can still drop the pin things on the floor!
Considering the delicacy of some Minitrains parts, such as steam pipes, handrails etc, it would be nice if there was a means of obtaining spares, especially for a ham fisted person like me !! And if operating chassis were available too ................. the world would be my mollusc