I've had the misplaced tool
I've had the misplaced tool thing happen wayyyyy too many times to remember. The only thing I loose and get back on a regular basis is my bright boys, I have about 4-5 of them now, They gradually disappear out of my toolbox between me using them and other people borrowing them at the club. I can't find them so I buy a new one, and all of a sudden, they all turn up again at about the same time....
On a less funny note for the "quick losses". Was under the club layout wiring in a panel back in high school, at that time I didn't have a soldering iron stand, so I just laid the iron on the floor while I was sitting under the layout. This worked pretty well right up until I soldered a connection, set the iron down, ran a new wire from the panel and then had to move to align the wire. It took about 2-3 seconds to line the wire and I reached for the iron, didn't see it. Just about then felt this really hot burning sensation from down below, I had sat on the tip when I moved. A quick jump in the air to get off the iron ended in a nice bruise on my head from the underside of the layout and a bunch of words were spoken at the time. I did loose the iron for a few seconds, but unlike loosing most things, it found me.....
I did also have another incident of "loosing things" that amounted to rolling stock. We have a pretty large hidden staging yard that is really only used by a handful of members, most people take their stuff home. This yard only occasionally sees use beyond the first 2-3 tracks from the aisle and the yard is very difficult to see back in unless you pull every single track at once. We had some guest operators show up at an open house, and I pulled some cars out of the yard in back and made up a train for them to run. After the open house I was in a hurry to leave, so I stuffed my equipment in staging, including the train I had set out for the guests. About 2 months later I was looking for a particular car I had ordered detail parts for, couldn't find it anywhere on the layout, pulled my normal tracks from staging, nope, not in there. Checked at home, in my drawers, nothing. I chalked that one up to a misplaced car (happens occasionally). A few weeks after not finding the car I went to run a coal train for a different open house on the modular layout. My coal train is mostly caswell gons, I had one car that had AB brakes and side panels, couldn't find that one particular car. I was really concerned about that one car, but still needed to get the train ready for the show regardless. So then I go for the caboose to pack up and.... hey wait a minute, wheres my slogan caboose? Checked all the caboose tracks in yards, not there, pulled my usual staging tracks, not there. By this point I'm getting rather upset and start going through the fleet visually. I notice several missing pieces, I send out a club email asking if anyone knows the whereabouts of said equipment, nobody seems to know. This all gets lost to time, and now its been about 6-7 months since the open house. I bought the reefer block out of staging and was running it at the open house. A guest operator who bought his own equipment goes for lunch, parks his train on the 3rd staging track, the track where I normally keep the reefer block, not a big deal, I'll stick the reefer block on 4 when I take a break for lunch. Lunch time rolls around, I line the switches into 4 and enter the yard at what most people would call "excessive speed". the train disappears under the layout, and a few seconds later there is a loud crash from inside the tunnel and my train abruptly stops. I pull the inspection panels off and there is rolling stock jack-knifed all the way across to the front of the yard, I start re-railing equipment and eventually get to my engine that entered the tunnel, which is up against a caswell gon.... with AB brakes and side panels....... I had completely forgotten storing the train on a staging track after the previous open house and never did a full visual search of the yard on tracks I normally didn't use. So for about 6-7 months I was searching for cars that were exactly in the same spot I left them in.....
