10. Helper - The person you'd least want touching your trains and working on your layout but who is the only one who shows up regularly for work nights.

9. Helix - A cat that enjoys sitting in tunnels waiting for trains to come in so he can attack.

8. Glad hands - Those little cherubic hands that want to reach up and touch everything. Also known as why you should have built your bench work at 58".

7. Flying switch - The Shinohara that has given you trouble for so long that you finally send it sailing across the room.

6. Hack - That fellow with all the (alledged) electronics experience who completely rewires your club layout without wire diagrams, schematics, or written notatations of any sort who quits just before it's discovered it ain't a workin' (usually one week before the open house...).

5. Flimsie - The way you built the roadbed that just dropped your best friend's brand new $2000+ brass Big Boy on the floor!

4. Form 19 - The paper work a psychiatrist is required to fill out when you foolishly admit you are a model railroader.

3. Spring switch - Your first hand laid turnout with the points that simply refuse to line up with either stock rail!

2. Protecting the rear -

a) What the guy is supposed to do to the back of the van to keep all the club's modules from falling out all over the freeway at 70mph

b) What the guy actually does when the van doors open and the club's modules are distributed on Intersate 80 at 70mph.

1. Retarder - See Helper above.