I have a customer with a 4-4-0 that runs like a champ except the motor is starting to give up the ghost. I don't want to send it in for repair or swap because out of 5 tries we got a good one. This loco runs perfectly true, no wobble and wiggle. All the others we tried bobbed and wobble so much they would derail on straight track when you tried to pull a load up a grade.

Has anybody played around with remotoring one of these and possibly improving pickup? I was looking at a way to put all wheel pickup on the tender and possibly putting a gear head motor and flywheel on it. I would like to slow it down and smooth it out some.

I have suggested the new Spec 4-4-0 but he want's the old time look, not the more modern look of the spectrum. We have it pulling a trio of the new excursion cars and I must say it looks perfect for the job.

Tony H

 

Although the reskin of the Bachmann catalog is very nice looking, it is not at all functional. Why is there a continuing trend of websites looking nicer and nicer yet becoming harder and harder to use??

The new catalog listings are useless. They give a part number, a price, and a picture so small you can barely tell what you are looking at. The descriptions are generic and contain no information about road name or number so you can't even use them as a reference either. Then about a third of the items don't have pictures at all. Look up a Spectrum N scale Heavy Mountain and tell me which one is the C&O with Vanderbuilt tender, which is the N&W, etc. They have no pictures for reference, no decriptions in the text, nothing to tell you what you are supposed to be looking at.

If you want to promote the product, give some good pictures and usefull information about it. Don't make finding the loco you want a search harder than digging through the swap meet tables at the train show. Right now the only way to find out if a road name is available in the loco you want is to click on each item, one at a time, till you find it or run out of options.

The old version was only slightly better but at least you could tell what version of the loco you were looking at.

My experience with these couplers so far as been on the J-class, the H16-44, and the new Spectrum Vanderbuilt tenders and it is less than stellar. I applaud the move to knuckle couplers but it would be nice if we could actually use them.

What exactly are these supposed to couple too? They are mounted so low that they barely touch a microtrains coupler height gauge. They couple with less than a 1/3rd of the knuckles making contact and do not stay coupled.

For our customers that have bought J's with the Con-cor passenger sets, I have found it easiest to just swap the tender back to a rapido. The stock knuckle won't mate with a Microtrains truck properly.  The same is true with the H16-44. On my vanderbuilt tenders (I bought 5) I haven't even begun to figure out what is the best cure. They will have knuckles on them eventually but certainly not the Bachmanns.