Bread ties as model railroad parts

[Terry Toenges]

Upon seeing this, the rivet counters would ban me for life I took my Porter apart to try to clean the wheels and get some of the crud and little threads from around the axles. I guess I got it twisted too much and the little rivet that holds the linkage together popped out, bounced on the table and disappeared into the carpet. The short search I did seemed hopeless. Maybe I'll get a big magnet later. I had a bread twist tie on the table, so I stripped the coating off of it and poked it through the holes. I twisted it with pliers and cut it off. It works fine.
I'm still having issues with my Porter but this is not one of them. It will run six or eight feet and just stop. Sometimes it 's only for a few seconds and it goes again. Sometimes it doesn't go at all after it stops until I go give it a push. It does the same in forward and reverse. When it stops, all sound stops, too, so it's electrical and not mechanical. I've used my John Allen type track cleaner but I might have to do something different like an eraser to get the inside of the rails. The other locos do ok on the track.

[Trainman203]

I've used them as emergency jumper wires to feed dead point rails on switches.