All good things to do before you have visitors. To add curb appeal I added skirts or drapes to hide the empty look below the layout( nice way to hide storage tubs. I use clear ones so I can see at a glance what is in them. You sir are a brave soul leaving materials on the layout, my buddy did that and well it did not go well on clean up. The other thing that is great about DCC is you can program top scale speed a loco can go even wide open throttle( I know of adults who thought my trains were slot cars) I hope you and yours have a great holiday.
I bought a brass n scale steam locomotive with a wire that as far as I can tell was soldered from the trailing truck to the motor chassis frame (solder marks directly above and below each other; one on the bottom of the chassis, the other directly below it on top of the trailing truck aperture). The locomotive draws current but the lights don’t work and the loco doesn’t move. Im out of town so can’t make repairs now but given the problems the loco has, does that in your experience sound like something that can be fixed by just soldering the wire back into the training truck on one end then to the chassis on the other?
The motor needs to have two contacts - one from each rail. if yours doesn't, that's definitely the problem. in some models, the lights are powered differently than the motor - through the light board so it is very possible to have working lights and no movement. is your model DC or DCC?
It was on a shortcut back from a recent assignment I had over the summer. Would hear the trains frequently but finally was at the right place at the right time.
