You may be able to jack-rig a quick fix with some shrink tubing

It sounds like you have a severe short somewhere on your layout. See if you accidentally made a return loop somewhere. Or a train is crossing rails. That ding is a built-in circuit breaker tripping.

Len, using 15" radius curves and #4 turnouts opens up a lot of possibilities. It just limits you to any diesel, any trolley, or any short steam engine with 6 or less drive wheels. Maximum means maximum. Not everybody has a whole room for trains.

Blairsurf, you should do a google search for "small HO train layouts" and put in 4x7 if you want to. You can also search for "door-sized HO layouts". I hope this helps.

I use JBWeld's Super Weld. It's a UV light-activated superglue that comes with the light. Available at your local Home Depot.

I'm gling to glue cork roadbed to the grassmats and nail in the code 80 sectional track, then ballast it to blend the cork and the grass.

Usually, diesels run pretty well on small-radius curves. Most diesels will run fine on 9 3/4 radius. I don't know about smaller, bur ir should be fine.

The hobby shop didn't have any rerailer tracks and I'm not paying ~$35 for a single turnout, so I picked up the bumpers.
I'll get the rest from halfpricehobbies, I guess...

I found a couple packs of track lying around from the last time I went to the hobby store. I'd been searching for them for about 17 days! It's all curve track since my first plan was an all-curve dogbone shape, but it's the same radius.

Now I need a switch track, the bumper, and the rerailers. I will pick up the switch track this weekend, and maybe the bumper. It would be great if I can pick up all the track I need, but money does need to go to real life as well.

The cheapest thing to do is go to a swap meet or a "local" hobby shop to see if they have an 80s or 90s power pack from either Bachmann, Tyco, or LifeLike.
As long as it has 2 dc terminals and 2 ac terminals and a knob to control dc power, it'll work.
Usually they will be less than $5.
And you can use the ac terminals for some lighting or action accessories.

It looks like it has been used. The boxes have been taken out of the main box at the very least.

It's going to take them a while to rust out here in Arizona, where the average humidity is under 25% and the rainfall is miniscule

When the engine came to Roselle, IL a few years ago...
I was in such a spot that as it came into the station that if the intrusive thoughts had won for even a moment, I could've reached out and touched the running gear.
I didn't, of course, but there were no protections around.

My one and only DCC engine doesn't have sound.

Thanks guys. I was leaning towards DC anyway. I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing any super functionality to DCC.

I think I'll keep it at DC then, since I just have the one train.
It's really just some background thing to go around my computer monitor (I have a topic on it with track plans in the N-scale board).