I have a little bit of everything going back to the 1970s. Some of the older models from the 1980s and 90s only drive one truck with a 3 pole pancake motor and pick up power from the other truck. They also have rubber drive tires. Those are the ones to avoid since they are poor performers that will split gears and spin off the drive tires. The one truck drive models will eventually end up dead on a display shelf unless you have a box of spare parts which are no longer available from Bachmann and you are good at repairing them. The plus models are all wheel drive and all wheel power pick up. Those are good runners.

Quote from: ABC on March 06, 2010, 11:26:05 AM

Quote from: Hellhound on March 06, 2010, 04:09:43 AM
Carpet fibers shouldn't be a problem with EZtrack since there is a plastic roadbed under it.

Okay then setup your track on some carpet and run a loco every day for a couple hours over a year with no more than maintenance required for a "regular" layout and I guarantee that by the end of the year the loco either won't be running or won't be running as well as it was previously.

Did that as long as I lived in that house (23 years) It was a small house and I didn't have the luxury of a hobby room. I still have the same locomotives today and still run them. Some of them are over 30 years old. They got cleaned and oiled periodically as the manufacturer recomended and I did tend to avoid locomotives with exposed gears.

Carpet fibers shouldn't be a problem with EZtrack since there is a plastic roadbed under it. Use Kadee 119 shelf couplers to prevent vertical uncoupling. I use EZ track to build temporary layouts on my living room carpet all the time. Sometimes I want to run trains in the living room instead of the attic or I want to test a new layout.
Many years ago, when I lived in a much smaller house, laying track on the living room carpet was the only option and at that time I only had standard sectional track with no roadbed. I have a lot of old locos and rolling stock with the old style X2F horn hook couplers. All of those couplers have a shelf built into them and will resist vertical uncoupling. From my experience, the X2F couplers are more reliable on imperfect track and on layouts with changes in elevation such as a figure 8 over and under layout.

Mine is Kyota, a character from "Hellbound" An online comic that ran from 2004 to 2007.

Quote from: jettrainfan on January 06, 2010, 06:38:03 PM
i read somthing about their being 5 CSX engines in chessie system paint and in 2003, 2 of them got repainted. So their still is 3 and they are near the ohio area.

Here is one of the last Chessie cats photographed last november. It is sitting in the weeds with a failed main generator, sad sight.  http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=311503&nseq=69

It has a split plastic gear, I have an older Brill trolley with the same problem.

Some of those locomotives don't get to the paint shop very often. I see some of them going by here that are so rusty I can't tell what color they were.

I live next to the CSX main line in Ohio and see all kinds of oddball units. I have recently seen BNSF, Union Pacific, Norfolk & Southern and CN locomotives. Sometimes they are mixed with CSX units and sometimes they are all the same road names. I see old Conrail units mixed with CSX all the time. Today I saw a couple of slugs and a yard switcher behind a pair of GE dash 9 locomotives going south. I haven't been seeing any of these locomotives with logos or numbers painted out, if those are leased then they are running them just the way they got them from the other railroad. I have seen a few Chessie cat locomotives but those are getting to be a rare sight these days and I know of at least one Loco still wearing B&O blue with the capital dome logo on the nose.

I would like to see some 4 wheel switcher locomotives in both diesel and steam.
There aren't many of those on the market today and the few that are available are throwbacks to the 1970s and don't run very good. They are geared way too fast, have a 3 pole motor and only drive 2 wheels. Some of them also have rubber drive tires which cause poor electrical contact. The best small switcher I have found is the Roundhouse EMD40 which is now out of production. The EMD40 is all wheel drive and heavy enough to get good traction without drive tires. It also has a 5 pole motor with a flywheel. It is very smooth and a good puller for such a small locomotive. EMD40, http://www.northeast.railfan.net/images/chs1309.jpg

Here is one I would like to see modeled,  Brookville DES70B center cab http://www.northeast.railfan.net/images/mn404.jpg

Or one of these, GE 25 ton http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=87429

Industrial steam loco, 0-4-0T http://www.northeast.railfan.net/images/tr_nhtr43.jpg

Quote from: Robertj668 on December 31, 2009, 06:59:00 PM
Pipefitter
That was a great walk through on how to do it. I think I will call or email Bachmann and see if doing that voids the warranty.

I wonder what does happen to those engines that get returned?

Robert

I beleive they are used for spare parts if they are not repairable.

I too would like an HO scale forney. I have two on30 forneys and they are my favorites.

I avoid locomotives with traction tires whenever possible. Those are a big headache. The tire will stretch and spin off the wheel or break. They will cause erratic operation due to poor electrical contact on the rubber tired wheels. Rubber drive tires are just a quick and dirty fix for a locomotive that is too light to get good traction. Since there is no local hobby shop in my area I buy most of my model railroad equipment from online stores. I have gotten a couple of locos with traction tires. I will change the wheels and add weight to these models whenever possible. If a locomotive stalls I either shorten the train or do what the full scale railroaders do and add more motive power.
  As for "more traction than a locomotive was designed to handle" ...Keep in mind that the drive trains consist of plastic gears, they aren't metal anymore. ...I once managed to overload an older Athearn GP35 locomotive to the point that one of the trucks broke loose from the frame.   

Quote from: jward on October 16, 2009, 09:18:26 AM
in model or in real life?

in real life i can think of two advantages.

1. steam had all drive axles physically connected by the siderods, thus you couldn't have one axle slip the way you can with most diesels. this makes them in theory more sure footed.

2. steam engines don't develop their full horsepower until they get up to speed, thus any train they can start, they can pull at their max speed. with diesels, all power is available to start the train, and tapers off as speed increases. diesels will find a speed at which they can lug the train, and stay there.

My grandfather worked for the Nickel Plate Road during the second world war. He said they had a shortage of motive power during the war so they would load a locomotive down with a train that was sometimes too heavy to start. They would then have to use one of the yard engines to give the train a push start.

I have had several locomotives from more than one manufacturer with split plastic gears. Some of them no longer had parts available so they are now static displays. Had to replace all four axles on a P2K BL-2, all of them had split gears. My Brill trolley now has the 'click of death' and will have to be repaired.
  All of the locos that I owned in the 1970s had metal gears. They never had any gear problems, even with all three of us kids running them almost constantly.   

I have the MP GP-20 purchased from Model train stuff. It has all wheel drive and all wheel pickup. It is heavy and runs good. This is a big improvement over the older RS-2 which jerks to a start, is way too light to pull many railcars and stalls on an up hill climb.