Ever unbox a brand-new loco or piece of rolling stock, place it on the track… and it doesn’t work right out of the box? Frustrating, right?
Sometimes it’s a simple fix—like a loose factory wire or a truck mounted backward. Other times, it feels like you’re doing surgery on something that should be perfect.
Have you run into issues with new gear straight from the shop? What did you discover and how did you fix it?
I’ve had a couple straight-from-the-box surprises. One loco had a motor wire loose from the factory—thankfully an easy solder job. Another time, the wheels on a passenger car weren’t seated properly and caused constant derailments until I reinstalled them correctly.
One of the trickiest ones was a DCC engine that wouldn’t respond—it turned out the decoder wasn’t seated properly on the board. Took some careful reseating and a little bit of patience, but it eventually came to life.
It’s frustrating, but I’ve learned to always test new items slowly and inspect everything—especially the underbody and couplers—before blaming the track or controller. Anyone else have “fresh from the box” horror stories… or surprising fixes?
