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Where do All the Little Bits Disappear to?


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This afternoon I decided to run an enthusiast special.  Class 66 and coaches taken from boxes, placed on fiddle yard and run to branch teminus.   Send out a steam outline loco, Hornby 34070 Manston,  light to take the return working.   Then use the class 66 to work back as a trip freight for a single VDA which has been out to the goods yard for a couple of days.   Start packing the stock away again and now there's a buffer missing off a Hornby coach and a coupling hook missing off the Bachmann VDA.    Logically one would expect to find the broken off bits either in or beside the boxes which they were taken out from earlier, or to have dropped off somewhere along the layout.    I failed to find either the buffer or the coupling hook despite an exhaustive search.  I am thankful for my spares box that I was able to repair the rolling stock before repacking into its boxes, but I wonder where all these small bits, buffers, coupling hooks etc. disappear to.   Does anyone else have the same problem?

Edited by cessna152towser
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4 minutes ago, cessna152towser said:

This afternoon I decided to run an enthusiast special.  Class 66 and coaches taken from boxes, placed on fiddle yard and run to branch teminus.   Send out a steam outline loco, Hornby 34070 Manston,  light to take the return working.   Then use the class 66 to work back as a trip freight for a single VDA which has been out to the goods yard for a couple of days.   Start packing the stock away again and now there's a buffer missing off a Hornby coach and a coupling hook missing off the Bachmann VDA.    Logically one would expect to find the broken off bits either in or beside the boxes which they were taken out from earlier, or to have dropped off somewhere along the layout.    I failed to find either the buffer or the coupling hook despite an exhaustive search.  I am thankful for my spares box that I was able to repair the rolling stock before repacking into its boxes, but I wonder where all these small bits, buffers, coupling hooks etc. disappear to.   Does anyone else have the same problem?

The tentacles of the carpet monster reach far and wide...

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In my experience the bits you do find on a layout:

a) Are not the bits you are looking for.

b) Do not appear to belong to any stock you have.

(However just occasionally when looking for a part that went missing today you'll find something you lost months ago, presumably some form of time travel is involved.)

Edited by JeremyC
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Sometimes it's the carpet monster, in which case it's not a bad idea to seive through the contents of the dust bag before you bin them (do this when the missus is out, she already doubts your sanity for having a layout in the first place).  But just as often it's the Space Elves from the Planet Zarg, who purloin stuff by means of their highly advanced inter-galactic beaming technology just to annoy you, because they can...  When you are taking things apart, they and the carpet monster can be foiled to an extent by sticking small screws and similar stuff into a lump of Blutac, but when stuff comes off in normal running (and I'm looking at you, Hornby) or handling there is not much you can do about it! 

 

Try distracting the Space Elves with socks, as they find single socks irresistable, beaming them to Zarg and converting them, again with the superior technology, to wire coat hangers, one of the most annoying and useless objects known to man though they had a funtion as car radio aerials back in the 70s.  They will return the sock to your laundry basket the week after you have disposed of the other one, which you kept in case it's friend turned up.  They also sometimes, if they are in a good mood, return lost items shortly after you have bought a replacement.  Sometimes it is a fairly large item; I have, or rather once had, a Parkside GW Mica B van which has simply disappeared, and there is no floor or skiriting board gap big enough to have swallowed it.  I've now ordered an eBay Hornby Dublo replacement for re-chassising in the hope that it will turn up on the above basis, but it is 3 or 4 months since I've seen it!

 

One thing that does defeat me on a continual basis despite my making serious efforts to prevent it is losing lamps.  Modelu and Springside head and tail lamps simply vanish over a period and I have to restock about every 6 months or so; I glue brake van side lamps in place, but have managed to lose a couple of those as well.  I need a stock of about 15 head and a dozen tail lamps.  The handles come off the Modelus (which I prefer for appearance and the slot in the bottom that means they can be placed on and removed from brackets) with handling no matter how careful I am so these have to be replaced regularly anyway.

 

Tbh, it doesn't help that my work table is spectacularly messy, and a serious tidying session would probably bring all sorts of useful stuff to light!

Edited by The Johnster
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2 hours ago, The Johnster said:

They also sometimes, if they are in a good mood, return lost items shortly after you have bought a replacement.

Yes, I have that experience too.   I lost an etched nameplate off a loco.   Months later, after I had bought a replacement pair, the original turned up on the floor, even though the floor had been checked and cleaned several times in the intervening period.   My wife still hasn't found her three metre long guitar cable which went missing a few months ago from the top of her amplifier.

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17 minutes ago, cessna152towser said:

   My wife still hasn't found her three metre long guitar cable which went missing a few months ago from the top of her amplifier.

Have you checked the washing machine filter?  It's probably hiding in a sock with 2 or 3 coins, a marble and a piece of something you can't identify.

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3 hours ago, JeremyC said:

you'll find something you lost months ago, presumably some form of time travel is involved.)

 

The rational explanation for this is that the bits pinged off at 88 mph. You need to set your on board computer to know when you'll find them. 

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Usually things turn up when you're not looking for them. Unfortunately, trying to play this fact by deliberately loosing something else in the hope the bit you need will then show up, does not work. 

The usual comments from the patner of 'it will be in the last place you look' is hopelessly obvious and  frankly unhelpful!

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I always thought lost socks were taken by the invisible pink unicorn. 

 

Bits fall of all sorts of things in all sorts of places.

 

I lost a loco buffer at Warley once. Found it hiding in plain sight 2 inches behind the loco on the shelf upon which the loco was display.

How it detached itself and migrated a short way between Friday and Sunday remains one of those mysteries of which Arthur C Clarke would be proud. 

 

Andy

 

 

Edited by SM42
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I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time searching the carpet below my modelling table for small to tiny items which I usually see fall but when I go to retrieve them they'll nearly always be some distance from the 'drop zone', and are often found hiding behind the nearest table leg or in a dark corner. I have to keep a torch handy for the purpose. The words "How the hell did it get there?!" are often heard floating around in blue-tinged air!

Heljan's diesel bufferbeam pipes are a particular nightmare because the harder you grip them with tweezers (or pliers) the further they ping when they refuse to go into the hole you've already drilled out a little to avoid this very scenario. If I ever find them again it will be long after I've robbed replacements from something else.

While in rant mode which may be a bit OT.........something I refer to as LOS - 'Last One Syndrome'. If you have more than one of anything to do, e.g. fitting buffers or handrails, or removing screws (a real classic that) it doesn't matter where you start the process, just when you think you've cracked it the Last One will play up big time. Even if you foresee LOS rearing its ugly head and change the start point at the last moment you can't thwart it. I know, I've tried that, doesn't work! :banghead:

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I am sure we all suffer from the carpet monster eating our precious only one I have bits,lamanate flooring doesn't help as it just bounces further, but when I moved house. And the junk room had to be cleared out before the removal men took it all away I stripped the room packed all the kit and bits dismantled everything so I had a empty room , then with clean new vacuum bag fitted did the room. Forensic search was then carried out of the dust bag , but still bits were never found ! Only a few hand rail knobs that had pinged in the past.and other replaceable bits

 The worse thing you can do though is move!  I can not find the chassis for my M&SWR no27 Albion models kit, that was being built before I moved, its large enough as the main frames were built, but no wheels fitted so it didn't roll away ! Where is it ?

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The full explanation can be found in Robert Rankin's excellent tome Raiders of the Lost Car Park.

 

Basically, get a paper map of the World and try to wrap it round a globe - it will not fit, there are spaces - this were all the lost things go!!

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This is one of the things that infuriates me... I've an Arnold 0-6-0 tank loco that's missing, bizarrely, a single bit of motion.  I know it was in the box with the loco for years, I can even still picture it in my mind, and it's not there now even though I've not run anything from that box in a decade.

 

The weirdest one was a scratchbuilt 009 railcar I made in about 2008, my first piece of 009 stock.  When we moved house in 2011, it was carefully wrapped up, put in a box; and vanished without trace.  I'd swear I searched every damned cupboard, toolbox, and crate in the house (and that includes when the foster-kids moved in, and we had to empty the spare room).  I assumed at some point that I'd accidentally binned it... then when converting the loft this Spring, there it was, wrapped in bubblewrap in a box I could have sworn I'd checked multiple times.

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I've had various things completely disappear into thin air:-

As a boy, I pushed a Dinky Toy car under a bed settee, so far I couldn't reach it. No trace of it when the offending piece of furniture was moved. A few years later a Peco Wonderful wagon disappeared into thin air, when I had a layout in the loft (different house - this one must have been the loft insulation monster) and, most odd of all, I dropped the plastic lid from my Garrard stylus gauge under the bench in my workshop, when we first moved to Italy. This was never seen again despite the floor being tiled and lacking hiding places.

Of course various screws, springs (Kadee a prime culprit), etc. have vanished into the jaws of carpet monsters, gremlins, borrowers, time travellers, aliens.....

Edited by Il Grifone
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Lost and never seen again are:

Wrenn Blue Circle presflo  last seen around 1982

 

Most of a Parkside CCT kit. 

Last seen around March, so there is still hope

 

Buffers from a Lima Western. Last seen around 1995

 

Numerous handrails. No hope

 

Andy

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5 hours ago, Il Grifone said:

I've had various things completely disappear into thin air:-

As a boy, I pushed a Dinky Toy car under a bed settee, so far I couldn't reach it. No trace of it when the offending piece of furniture was moved.

 

Your post reminds me of my very first 'disappearing part mystery' - at the beginning of my kit building career (and encouraged by an aeromodelling uncle I started very young) I was building a plastic car kit - I can't remember the name now, not Airfix, the kits were around 1/43 scale and very nicely moulded, with stiff wire axles - it was a Hillman Minx and I dropped a wheel on the floor........I never saw it again and the Minx remained a very un-Hillman-like 3-wheeler. I recall building a Vauxhall Cresta from the same maker, with four wheels this time but the neat moulding was undermined by the glazing having to be cut from thin but flat glazing material...........the Cresta had a very curved rear screen.......I did try but, at my age at the time, nah!! :nea:

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I remember the Cresta's rear screen (I had Ford's equivalent for a while - MkII Consul). Cars back then had much better rear vision than today's (or at least some of them!) and were built like a tank!

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=vauxhall+cresta&client=firefox-b-d&sxsrf=AOaemvK9fmGR4BePS_CCs7YgRtDv4WJQgg:1632470532508&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwimw8jRkpfzAhXCyKQKHcxbCUMQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1296&bih=655&dpr=1

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It's even worse when find things that you did not know you'd lost and don't know where they came from!

 

I recently found an red tipped air brake pipe (4mm) - checked the Dapol 68s which were most likely - all pipes present and correct - all other locos and DVTs so fitted still fitted! Where is it from??

 

ARRRGH!

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8 hours ago, Bill Radford said:

It's even worse when find things that you did not know you'd lost and don't know where they came from!

 

I recently found an red tipped air brake pipe (4mm) - checked the Dapol 68s which were most likely - all pipes present and correct - all other locos and DVTs so fitted still fitted! Where is it from??

 

ARRRGH!

 

So that's where I left it

 

Andy

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