The MAGDELENO and DUMAS RR

I used to love to go to the Dumas's and play with their train set. They
had the deluxe model that  made smoke when you dropped a pellet down the
stack. It seemed to be a lot larger than our train, although I suppose
it couldn't have been too much bigger as they were the same gauge. If
you put your head down near the track it looked just like a real train
coming at you. If you put the side of your face on the track, the
current would make your eyeball twitch.

  Being typical boys we always wanted to make "Improvements" to the set
up. We would add track from our set to the Dumas's set to get greater
length. I remember running track the full length of our house, and we
must have done the same at the Dumas's. We would put loops at the end so
the train could run back and forth. These great lengths were too far for
the power supply and the trains would run slow. We solved that by using
power supply from both sets one on each end. Those trains would really
fly with both transformers and one train, especially our lighter one.
We could get it up to speed and throw it into reverse and watch the
wheels spin.

  Then we decided to climb hills by laying the track on tilted boards.
Before long we reached the limit of traction and the wheels just spun.
We found that putting rubber bands on the drive wheels would let us
climb ever higher hills. All this hot rodding soon stripped the gears
out of the Magdaleno engine and that ended our hot rod adventure.
- Al Magdaleno