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      |   |   
            | Subject: 
 | Well, after many years.... 
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            | Newsgroups: 
 | lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto 
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            | Date: 
 | Mon, 3 May 2004 19:50:10 GMT 
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            | Viewed: 
 | 2346 times 
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 |  | TLC sent me another broken piece. 
 Now friends, when I purchased one of the M-Tron sets off the shelf many years
 ago, I found a 2x8 hinge plate that looked like it was crushed in a press--the
 edge of the 2x8 portion of hte hinge was snapped, but still hangiing on.
 
 Anyway, I didn't care 'cause I had plenty of 2x8 plate hinges from my youth, and
 substituted and went on my merry way.
 
 Zap to present day...
 
 Well, I ordered a few new 9v track switches and promptly did some modifying
 right outta the box (thus, in my mind screwing up any sort of warranty that TLC
 may have, and I'd feel guilty about even asking for replacement parts after said
 modifications anyway)
 
 And then I put said switches on my basement layout.  Waittaminute, the actual
 switching mechanism on one of these new wyes isn't really working properly--it
 clicks in one direction, but wont move fully to the other side...  Hmmm...
 (xacto knife makes an appearance in my hand shortly thereafter...)
 
 After removing the bottom of the switching mechanism, I was surprised to see a
 metal contact looking as if it was fused with another piece of metal.  Well,
 maybe I did that when I modified the switch (basically soldering a wire to join
 the straight rails with the curved rails, so no matter where the switch is,
 there's always power to both rails).  But there was no other metal part inside
 the switch that looked fused.  Furthermore, this was one of 18 modified switches
 with nary a problem with the previous 17.
 
 Eh, it didn't really matter for those metal parts were only supplying power to
 whichever rail the switch was set on--since I soldered the jumper bwtween the
 rails, there's always power to both sets.
 
 So I took a Dremel to the damaged metal piece, cut it out, glued the bottom back
 on, and et voila, a perfectly functioning switch for my layout.
 
 See two pics of what Dave's rambling on about here--
 
 http://sparky.i989.net/ltrackmod.htm
 
 Dave K
 
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