| When Tim and I were around 8 or 9, Santa brought us a "swell" electric train that looked a lot like our Uncle Dave's old one! We didn't get very suspicious because we figured Santa made some sets alike to avoid new design delays or avoid labor problems with the Local Elf Union. Some of the "neat" things we used to do were to separate a track section which resulted in some great derailments! We also would lay some toy "army men" across the tracks and run over them with the speeding "O" Gauge frieght train at full speed! Sometimes this would cause another great derailment! We used to get those small battery powered electric DC "model" motors (no batteries included), and wire them to the electric train transformer. We would then slowly turn the transformer power up. WOW!, you can't imagine the RPM s that were generated! As we got higher on the numbered transformer scale, the little motor would be screaming with the approximate RPM s of a dentist's drill on steroids! Shortly thereafter, at these speeds, white smoke would start to pour out and a short time later, the little motor would die a horrible fiery death! The toy soldiers, on the other hand, fared MUCH better, since they were very well "trained". ;-) |
