So I'm making good progress on my layout expansion (see the wooden trestle pics from WPF current and last week)- 1) permanently settled-in AND sceniced #2 trestle, 2) #1 trestle got much closer to being permanent with a caulking of my almost-done hills behind it (so that I can finish that scenery first then permanently attach the trestle, 3) ballasted and weathered all of this area (around 8 feet of track, 4) my autoreverser was quickly wired up for the wye section in this area and it works great, and finally 5) itching to fire up the Binford 3000 Grassinator, but have to let the 'earth' paint dry over my caulk seam first, and apply some forest cover on that seam to blend (THEN trestle #1 will go in and be done).  Goals being seriously met!

Then Thanksgiving, and the grand-daughters are over.  Bored, so "let's go downstairs and see the progress!".  OOhs and Aaahs, so let's fire up the trains.  Uncleaned and un-vacuumed track I might add, but I got faith in No-Ox.  And it worked as advertised!  Great.  Then we get to my curved turnout, that branches off to trestle #1...dead frog!  After some serious use of a track cleaning eraser or two, it's a dead frog.  This turnout has performed flawlessly for two years, through countless non-cleanings (I plead guilty, Your Honor) and even as recent as two weeks ago when I was running trains through it to test out the trestle/track alignments....

So now I got some Holiday blues.  I told the CFO we shoulda never hired that Murphy guy!

On the plus side, it's only on one side of the turnout.  I'll just scrape some paint off the side of the rail, and probably de- and re-solder the wire coming off that frog and all should be right, and maybe for good measure redundantly solder up a jumper from the point rails to the stock rail.  Possibly do some surgery and try to replace a plastic tie with a PCB tie- that actually would be the best.  If I have ambition enough, I'll do a project I've had in the works since the CFO first authorized this expansion, that being to use a heavier-gauge bus wire.  I have the wires, in fact they've been laying under the layout for almost a year, all measured out and ready to be suspended and spliced into (Procrastinate a little???) but just needing the gumption (shove).  

So there's work to be done!  Holiday blues...