Dave,
About 12 months ago I purchased three new sealed in the boxes On30 railtrucks from a well known EBay retailer in the USA (I am in Australia). None of them would run. I didn't want to spend the money sending them back so dismantled them to find what the problem was. Being an Engineer I was thinking I may be able to do something to fix things (= void any warranty, but such is life).
All three had split gears either on the gearbox output shaft or within the differential, or both. I couldn't even muster up enough good gears to make one railtruck run. Tried repairing some gears with tiny amounts of superglue but that didn't work - only a few revolutions before the gears split again.
I have always found Bachmann products to be very good and this is the first time I have had any problems with their wares. Suspect a design or manufacturing fault, so I would not get another railtruck until Bachmann resolve the gear issues and either issue spare gear sets or re-release the model with modified gears - if they ever do.
If you really want a railtruck then one option may be to fit a third party mono drive rear axle to a Bachmann unit - not an inexpensive solution (would probably cost as much as you paid for the railtruck) and would require some failry major modifications to fit.
Regards,
Trevor
About 12 months ago I purchased three new sealed in the boxes On30 railtrucks from a well known EBay retailer in the USA (I am in Australia). None of them would run. I didn't want to spend the money sending them back so dismantled them to find what the problem was. Being an Engineer I was thinking I may be able to do something to fix things (= void any warranty, but such is life).
All three had split gears either on the gearbox output shaft or within the differential, or both. I couldn't even muster up enough good gears to make one railtruck run. Tried repairing some gears with tiny amounts of superglue but that didn't work - only a few revolutions before the gears split again.
I have always found Bachmann products to be very good and this is the first time I have had any problems with their wares. Suspect a design or manufacturing fault, so I would not get another railtruck until Bachmann resolve the gear issues and either issue spare gear sets or re-release the model with modified gears - if they ever do.
If you really want a railtruck then one option may be to fit a third party mono drive rear axle to a Bachmann unit - not an inexpensive solution (would probably cost as much as you paid for the railtruck) and would require some failry major modifications to fit.
Regards,
Trevor