Blake Schwendiman's Blog and Blook

If you are fortunate enough to have been born before 1980, you grew up in a golden age of children’s toys that existed before safety experts reduced playtime to a small set of non-toxic, learning-enriched, hypo-allergenic, organically-grown, oversized, politically-correct, plastic toys. We had real wood Lincoln Logs, erector sets, and a bazillion toys with tiny parts, buttons, snaps and other small pieces. I’m quite sure that my brother swallowed more hardware than food between 1973 and 1976 – I still remember what a thumbtack looks like in a stomach X-ray.

I miss electric trains. Train sets intended for children today consist of oversized plastic track segments and battery-powered plastic train cars. My first train set was the kind that inspired real imagination and provided hours of imaginative and constructive play.

The hours of play was not so much because I was so incessantly creative, but because it usually took several hours just to get the thing working. Old electric trains required careful setup because the electricity used to power the engine was carried along the track pieces. Therefore the track had to be assembled enough to create a closed circuit for the power supply. The power itself came from the wall outlet through a black box called a transformer. The transformer had two electrical connectors in the front onto which wires were attached (usually with a screwdriver). The wires then ran directly to the track. The process of attaching the power usually went something like this:

1.      Plug in the transformer.

2.      Breathe in a whiff of sweet, sweet ozone as something inside the transformer burned up.

3.      Locate some wire. This usually involved taking something else in the house apart.

4.      Find sharpest knife in kitchen to bare the wire at each end.

5.      Attach the wire to the transformer.

6.      Attach the wire to the track.

7.      Accidentally break the wire; get the knife; bare the wire; attach it again.

Once the power was attached and the track assembled, if all went well, the engine would power up as expected and the next phase of play (seeing how fast the engine could go before running off the track) would begin. Otherwise there was a long period of testing required. Many times the problem would be a break in the track or a bad wire (which sometimes happens when you yank wire out of an old clock radio). Sometimes the problem was in the engine itself. Being ever the curious child, I would exhaust every possible option before giving up on the engine. On this day, I may have gone a bit too far.

I had checked and re-checked my wiring and connections, but the engine would still not turn. I had even tried the ever-faithful method of banging the engine on the table a couple of times to ensure that it was in good working order before I decided to roll up my sleeves and take my solution to the next level.

I was not quite as inventive as James E. West, but I was always intrigued by electricity as a young person. I had learned that there was a flow direction in a direct-current circuit and I understood negative and positive connectors on batteries. Armed with that wealth of knowledge, I took it upon myself to solve my electric train power problem in a way best understood to man: simply add more power.

I spent the next hour gathering every nine-volt battery in the house. Then, using a complex wire-and-tape system, I carefully connected all of the batteries together in a long series. Next, I added the train set power transformer to the series and created a mammoth power factory that likely could have provided the annual power requirements for the Republic of Nauru.

I attached my power supply to the train track and carefully set the engine. I was sure that when I applied the power, I was going to set a new indoor land speed record in the HO scale electric train category. I slowly applied the power. Nothing happened. I jiggled the wires and tried again. Nothing. I banged the transformer on the table. Still nothing.

As every male human knows, the best way to check the charge in a nine-volt battery is to put it on your tongue. Because both the positive and negative connectors of a nine-volt battery are on the same end, it is quite simple to quickly touch the battery on the tongue. If it is a fresh battery, there will be a small jolt sent through the tongue proving that there is still sufficient power to do whatever a nine-volt battery is intended to do.

Being human and being male, it occurred to me that I had gathered a large collection of bad batteries from around the house and since I had forgotten to test each one individually and since it would be a lot of work to re-wire them again, I decided to test the entire group at the same time. Oh, and they were still wired in with the transformer that was still on and still plugged into the wall.

For a brief moment I thought I could see through time. I don’t remember feeling pain in the traditional sense; I remember having what I can only describe as a brief out-of-body experience as I collapsed to the floor. Fortunately for me the circuit between the wall socket, the batteries and my tongue was broken with my fall.

I never did try to get that train working again.