So I won an auction on a Bachmann Plus item for a cheap price and wanna resell it on my store, but I just wanna ask some people who had this item some questions.

1. When was this released and discontinued?

2. What features does it come with, and can it run on regular DC track?

https://twitter.com/bachmanntrains/status/1255528014684868612

It's announced Bachmann will do a virtual announcement much like with last week.

So I got myself some paint to fix up the eyes on Oliver, but I also accidentally scraped his left eyebrow and I need help on how to fix it.


Should I just wait for Bachmann to reopen and see if they can replace it?

Had a similar issue when I got my Henry from ModelTrainStuff today (it's when Henry's eyes are turned to the right, it'll jolt to the left, but this is only going fowards), so I took the face off and had to tweak it by using some vegetable oil (I know it's not good, but that's the best oil I have in the house until I can get some proper train oil) until it stopped that clicking.

If I get another Arry at ebay, should I just hold onto my old one until Bachmann reopens their store (if they don't open by Monday) to see if I can get just a different engine or just sell my defective model on ebay?

Also, is that 2 year protection plan worth getting?

By this point, I just feel like giving up. Because of the outbreak, it's likely I'll never be able to get my Arry issue fix as there's a tweet that it's more likely that they're gonna be closed for the next month. If they're not gonna be open by next Monday, I'm just sell this Arry and buy him from another site as I just feel like nothing's done.
https://twitter.com/bachmanntrains/status/1244995909546582016

If someone at the workshop would've know that how Arry wasn't working properly right away, then maybe this whole issue would've been avoid. But instead they just said they tested it, even though I know there's something wrong with it. And I can't send it to any local shops as non-essential business' are closed at the while.

The lesson I learned from this whole calamity is to never buy anything from ModelTrainStuff, because whenever I get something from them, there's a fault (Both the Ironwork Twins failed, and Oliver got a scratch on his right pupil).

So with the virus outbreak happening, I thought on this thread on where you guys get your engines and rolling stock. I'll start off.

When I first got into the range, my parents used to get the stuff from a site called Boscov's (a retailer in the New England area) and they would often buy certain engines or sets. Mainly to get advantage of the free shipping whenever my mom wants to get something there. The only issue with the site is that they only have certain engines and not any of the ones I would've wanted at the time (The only engines they had were Thomas, Percy, Toby, Emily and Spencer), so I'm kinda limited about it. I know there's other sites at the time, but I was only a minor at the time and can't use money to buy unless my parents accepted it. I don't use that site anymore as they hardly have anything related to either Bachmann or the Thomas franchise.

Nowadays, I get my engines from legit retailers like Amazon as I like to take advantage on the warranty repairs incase something happens with the engines. The only times I use ebay is either discontinued engines or rolling stock.

I'm just frustrated on the issue with Arry.

So because I send both Arry and Bert to the place, they mistakenly replaced Bert with another Bert instead of replacing Arry with a new Bert. So I send Arry again late last week/early this week to get him replaced with Bert, but they don't believe me and instead just send Arry back today. By this point, I just feel like giving up

I can't send Arry again to Bachmann as their offices are closed until the end of the month, and even then, I don't know if they can do anything about it. I recorded a video showing what the issue is to show Bachmann that I'm not making the story up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx7hKTh_gfw

I'm kinda tempting on open the spare Arry I got from Amazon as I don't know by this point if the Arry I have right now is gonna act out.

I got Oliver, but his right pupil has a scratch of paint and I just wanna know what's the best way to fix it? I did thought on sending him to the department to fix, but I don't want to keep sending my engines to there. Plus their shipping department is closed for the rest of the month.

I decided to contact Bachmann and Laura told me that I can replace Arry with another engine, but not the same one as they don't have him at the moment (whenever or not that means they won't make anymore or that they're just out until they can restock). So I send in a letter in the parcel to just give me another Bert (They're exactly the same, but I can remove some of the stubble to make that Bert look like Arry after Haydn said that won't matter)

I already sent my original Bert to the place, but they won't get it until Monday as the package will be there when they're closed on the weekend.

I'm not very happy at the moment as both the Ironworks Twins I got for Christmas (Arry and Bert) have faults in them recently and I don't know if it's just the fault with the toy or if it's from the retailer I got them from. I got them mainly due to the fact that Bachmann were gonna discontinue them and I figure getting them before they're gone, as I wanted to avoid the Salty dilemma.

I bought them from ModelTrainStuff as they had a Black Friday sale and got them a week later due to a backlog the store was having. I got both them within, but I got issues with Arry as he doesn't run the same as Bert. Mainly that unless he's going at high speeds, if he goes in a slow speed, he somewhat jitters. I tried him out on Bachmann and Hornby tracks, and he still has the same issue. I sent Arry to Bachmann a few weeks ago, but they didn't fix the problem as I still experience the same problem as before.

Then just recently when I was playing with Bert, he suddenly stopped. I never did anything bad with them, as I only play the toys at least a few times a month as I don't want to wear them out.

So I'm not happy at Bachmann as they didn't fix the issue with Arry, and also at ModelTrainStuff as they gave me faulty versions of the two characters. Because of what happened to Arry, I decided to waste money on getting duplicates just in case

I don't know, maybe I just have bad luck getting these two at the wrong time.

So I got both Arry and Bert from ModelTrainStuff and they both run differently when I start them on a slow speed. Bert runs normally, but Arry has some sort of a jump start. Like he runs, but there's a millisecond of a pause when he goes. I know twins in real life are different, but I'm kinda worried about it as I don't know if he'll run good for a long time, and because of how Bachmann is gonna stop making them, I don't know if I should get another one just in case.

So you think it's because Arry may've been bumped, or it's just how the motors are designed differently? Because there were tiny bits of paint chipped off of Arry when I got him, so I don't know if he may've got bumped and that might explain why he runs differently.

12/14/2019 Update:
So last night and this morning, I decided to clean out the tracks to see if that would fix it, but that didn't work. Then a user on discord told me to run the train at least an hour as it may've not stretch their wheels, but that didn't work either.

What do you guys think I should do; get him fix or get another Arry from a different site?

Quote from: Len on December 08, 2019, 06:09:21 PM
The trickest part was getting the eyeball levers lined up with the movement mechanism when snapping the face in. For some reason there was only 1 coupler in the 2/ bag. Sent a note to the parts folks requesting the 2nd coupler.

My parts came as well, but I didn't have the couplers. Thankfully I have Donald who has the same ones as Salty. And yeah, placing the eyeballs was hard for me as well. X(

I'm selling that Salty while I'm waiting for another shipment of parts I ordered yesterday. I'll phoned the site about sending the two couplings that were missing in the previous order and put them in the new order.

Anyway, here's the listing for Salty I put online (if Bachmann doesn't allow it, I'll remove it)
https://www.ebay.com/itm/254447303506

So I don't know if anybody made a similar post here or not, but I wanna start on the topic on how any of you got into the range, or just the hobby in general. I'll start with my story.

Exposure
I was into model trains at a very young age thanks to my parents getting me tapes about the hobby and wanted to try it out myself (eg. I Love Toy Trains), but my family never had the income for it. In fact, I remember when I was 3-4 years old that my parents were in a hobby store and there was a big Lionel Thomas set that I wanted it, but my parents didn't want to get it.

I may've first heard of the Bachmann Thomas range when I was in the fourth grade after one of my siblings got a Thomas magazine that showed some products such as Tomy and Wooden Railway, and I thought the Bachmann looked good but I wasn't into Thomas that much at the time. But what got me into it was during 2005 after looking at Sodor Island Fansite's content about Thomas and that was when I saw CaptainPunjab's "Thomas the Bachmann Model" series. Then again in the summer of 2007 after I got my interest of Thomas back that I saw more content using the Bachmann range and later found out about Hornby as well, thanks to the likes of DaWillstanator (when he used to be in the fandom), Trainboy7, HenryBlue and Dan Snell. It was on Christmas that year that I wanted a Bachmann Thomas set to start out, so my mom bought a basic circle set that comes with Thomas and his two coaches and also got Percy and two wagons to go along and I enjoyed playing with the train set a lot. What I didn't expect was how small they were considering I'm more used to the larger scale trains I've seen at stores and videos. Throughout the next few years I expanded some of my fleet of engines and rolling stock and enjoyed playing with them.

Decline and Re-entrance
But sadly my interest of the hobby didn't last that long for a while. It happened once the 2010s started when things went a bit sour for my family and because of it, I never had time playing with the trains like I used to and we had to put them away in storage. And because my family moved so much that I have a feeling the models (at least the engines) probably don't work as they used to. So how I got back into the hobby recently? Well, you can thank James May for that, as I watched an episode of "The Reassembler" where he took apart his Flying Scotsman model and fix it up that I was interested in the hobby again. Plus because I have some disposable income from the online tasks I do on some gig sites that I wanted to buy a HO/OO train set for my birthday.  I decided to start out getting a Hornby Flying Scotsman set before I can get into the Thomas range again. It feels good going back into the hobby, though I wish I wasn't gone that long due to the fact some of the engines are discounted during my absence.

Yeah, at least it looks like (hopefully) Bachmann still have the parts for him so at least building him will be easy as there's already the chassis build together.