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As long as we're on the topic of storage, I had a weird thing happen when I was little. My brother and I had a model train layout on a table platform. After some reworking we both had identical power Tyco packs. These were the simple transformer / rectifier / rheostat types (no transistors). We stored the layout out in the unheated garage for the winter and when we brought it back in both power packs were dead. Dead in the sense that they put out no power and if I put my ear up to them I could not hear the transformer hum that I was used to. At that age I had no meters so I couldn't prove that the primaries were open but that would be the assumption, sans hum (I don't think there was a power switch, just a polarity switch for direction on the DC side). The best guess I can make is that both had transformers that were somehow wound too tightly and that contraction in the cold broke the fine primary windings somewhere. Just odd that it happened to both.

I also recall that at the time that I knew there ought to be a bridge rectifier in there (or at least two diodes if a center-tapped arrangement) and not finding any when I explored the insides. But it musta been there and I have no way of knowing now what I did or did not know about what things looked like back then.

I still have an old German Märklin unit for AC trains which is actually a variable transformer. It saved some shows at a theatre when their exciter supply died!

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