Why you should not drink and surf

A couple of weeks ago the lads were having an E-mail chat on Saturday afternoon. As with all these things, various dumb ideas got kicked around. One of the oddest was the question of whether a working model could be made of this.

Several daft plans were kicked around, none of which made any real sense to me

A few beers later I was looking online and came across a possible solution. A Tomix TR01.

The attraction is that the wheelbase is adjustable, and the wheels are tiny. Its only driven on one end, but I don't think that it is a huge crisis. Its not like I'm going to haul container trains with it.


Having had a few beers or 2, it seemed like a good idea, and through the wonders of Ebay and Paypal with the addition of a few mouse clicks the ill conceived plan was put into action.

Tonight I arrived home to a box in the mail. Inside was one of those marvelous creations from the tiny engineers of Japan. (not that I have anything against the tiny engineers of Japan, but I sometimes wish that when it came to scientific instruments they would make things large enough for large 'gaijin' fingers).

So, out of the box and onto the bench. Size wise it looks the part. Maybe a bit boxy on top.


Compared to a Da its tiny.


Onto the layout and it runs quite well. Nice and slowly with a reasonable top speed. The wheel back-to-backs were a bit narrow but this isn't too hard to fix. From this point things got a bit out of hand. The plastic top piece and the power connections to the motor were the first to go. In their place a Digitrax DZ143 DCC chip which had turned up in a care package from Long Island some time ago. I had not previously had a worthwhile project to put it into, and I'm now glad I saved it for this.


With a brass top for weight it should be able to pull several wagons, which is more than enough for a couple of log bogies.

And the moral of the story; Don't drink in front of the computer. After a while anything seems reasonable.