A picture would help a lot.

My understanding is as follows:

1) Original MSRP was $350?
2) not sure
3) Not DCC, but DCC ready. You it's wired for DCC, but there's a dummy plug inside. Remove that and plug in a decoder, and it will run properly on DCC.
4) Current production goes for about $200-$250 on the Internet, usually including DCC.  A DCC decoder runs about $20 and should be about a 15 min job to install as long as you're careful.

Quote from: jamesjr43026 on December 06, 2011, 03:14:07 PM
... my old trains from the 70's again.  The old engines I have can only pull 3 to 5 cars.

They probably aren't in top condition, then. I have a number of engines from that era, and all of them will pull at least 10+ cars on level track, even the least of them.  Most of mine weren't anything to write home about, either - they were $15 locomotives (Tyco, early Bachmann, etc) or at best Athearn blue boxes. If the motor and gears aren't lubricated, or in good alignment, or the track is dirty, or the cars are heavier than normal, or have dried-up lubrication gunk on them, or some combination of these, it's easy to imagine that the train size would drop precipitously.

More than likely an hour or so of diligent maintainance would get them in much better operating condition.

Quote from: Pacific Northern on December 06, 2011, 01:02:22 AM
I assume you tried turning the headlight on?

Yep, I did. In my case, everything else works - sound, motor, etc.

Many of the new releases can pull about 50% more than that (35+), but it doesn't sound like you had enough rolling stock to find out just how much your GP-38 could pull. The thing that I'd be more concerned about is how much they can pull on grades - there aren't many of us who have big enough layouts to be running trains much longer than 20 feet long.

Well of course. I fully understand that it's a business. But then again, there are a surprising number of relatively obscure models being produced today. The PRR Q-2, for example - it's very much a specialty item, even though it's PRR. Baldwin Centipedes are another good example - again, PRR, but still a very limited scope. Milwaukee Bipolars - there are many models that are popular that may not reflect the success of the prototypes. U50B's are SP, but aren't exactly the most popular items out there. Same goes for DD35's - but I bet Athearn made a pretty fair amount of money on that model, nonetheless.

One might think, though, that a Ps-4 might be popular, despite the fact that Southern seems not to be one of the top-drawing fan railroads. And 4501 might draw well too, for the same reasons if not more. Especially if 4501 is going to

For reference, all of the above C&O have been built in brass, at one time or another. And yes, I do have several of them. But they're a lot of work to bring up to current standards. They don't even have lights, let alone can motors, DCC, sound, etc. My K2 is on the bench right now with its guts hanging out as I try to put in a can motor, new gears, plumb fiber optics for lights, a sound decoder and one (or even two) speakers. The point being that even given the availability of brass, the entry price is even higher than it might appear. The parts alone are nearly the price of plastic models, if available.

Oo-oo!!  F-19, please!  Or a K-3.  Or both.    How about an H-7 2-8-8-2?

But aside from them, a Southern PS-4 Pacific (eg 1401), an Ms-2 (4501) Mikado, or Ts-1 4-8-2...

I doubt it would be popular enough to be successful, but I'd love an ACL R-1 4-8-4.

I can dream, I guess  

And yes, I probably would buy at least one of all of these. More than one of each the C&O ones, in fact.

> LHS pays the shipping cost

But there's also another thing: the distributor pays the shipping if the order is large enough. The LHS that I work with does usually have a big enough order with the bigger distributors (certainly Walthers) to avoid a shipping bill. Of course, I think we pay it no matter what, it's just hidden better in some places than others.

Interesting.  I just received another Spectrum 4-6-0 (different paint, and I think different driver size) and my headlight doesn't work either. They're supposed to, right?  (It says operating headlight in the catalog.) And from the same source, too.

Many years ago (1974) I had an AHM/Rivarossi Big Boy that really did go around 18" curves very reliably. I had a relatively large layout with 24" curves, but one of my friends had a little 4x8 with 18" and we just had to try it out. As long as there was enough clearance on the outside of the curve, it was able to pull a silly train that stretched all the way around the oval to just a couple of inches from the coupler of its caboose! Maybe 20-22 cars?  The overhang was pretty ridiculous, though, and I'm pretty sure we couldn't run it on the inner loop if there was any equipment on the outer loop.

He preferred diesels to steam, so he had kitbashed a DDA40x Centential out of an Athearn DD35 and some GP40 shells. It looked almost as ridiculous as the 4-8-8-4.

Thanks Bach-man.

I was suspicious as my LHS ran out of 4-6-0's about six months ago, a couple of big retailers also are out, and I have watched the stocks dwindle for the past several months.  I'm stretching my toy budget in the startup of a new layout, including a transition from straight DC to DCC and sound, so I haven't been in the position to snatch up any items beyond these startup costs. Several months ago the 4-6-0's were easily located at four or five online places, now it's close to impossible to find.

Is it safe to assume that items like the 4-6-0 are produced only in batches?

@richg: yeah, I know about those two sources. In fact, I got my 4-6-0 there. I watched them disappear at modeltrainstuff, then at trainworldonline, and also at a couple of other sources.

Without the Bach-man's comments I think it's certainly a plausible theory that one or more of these would be going the way of the USRA 4-8-2's, and so many other items in this new world of limited-run models.  As an example I bought what appears to me to be the next to last Proto2k 0-8-0 painted for C&O on the Internet... I found one place that had five, then they had four, then three, then two - so I ordered one. They still have the other one. 

(This is HO, by the way.) My guess is that they are now out of production, but I really cannot tell for sure. I snatched a 4-6-0 with 63" drivers, but it was about the last one I could find.  The Bachmann's web site certainly still shows both the 52" and 63" drivered 4-6-0's as current, but there are essentially none available from any of the usual sources, LHS or otherwise.

By now I thought that the 2-8-0's were transitioning from Spectrum to "regular." But even these are hard to find, although not as hard as the 4-6-0's.

Are these still in production? Is there some way to tell the true status from the Bachmann web site?

I guess I have a different view. I routinely pay more at a LHS, since I get a lot of valuable information from the staff. (Almost) nobody on the Internet is going to spend two hours with me talking about DCC stuff or the differences between Shinohara and Atlas switches, so I can figure out which one to buy. Even if I can find that, it takes a lot longer. It's worth the 10-15% premium for that. (And I also have a personal code of ethics about this: if I spent their two hours, I'm buying it from them unless there's some reason I can't.)

I'm price sensitive just like everyone else. If my LHS has to buy a Spectrum 4-6-0 for 20% more than I can buy it online, and I haven't availed myself of specific services about it, I'm sure as heck going to buy it online. (Or, in my case, a different, not-local HS near one of my traveling offices.)  No kidding, my non-LHS in a big western city (I live on the east coast) sells the same item for 20% less than my LHS has to buy it.

I have two LHS - one is the full-service one that I spend most of the money with, because they stock (or will order) what I need/want, and because they have the staff who can help me. The other gets essentially none of my business despite being marginally closer, because, well, they don't stock what I want and don't have the staff to help. I don't even consider driving there - it's so much easier to just click, if I'm not going to get service. At least as far as I am concerned, one of these LHS is very much at risk, the other is not.

I have a 47x17mm speaker in mine. I'm not sure who the vendor is, but I got it at Caboose Hobbies in Denver.

My tender was not particularly set up for a speaker, but it wasn't too tough to mount it with a couple of bits of styrene and a few holes in the coal pile.

I know that the original Spectrum 2-6-6-2's were USRA versions, and Bachmann offers them as such. In C&O paint, they are H-5's. I am pretty sure that the next versions offered were H-4's, which to my eye were the H-5 (USRA) boilers with modified front cylinders, with slide valves instead of the USRA's piston valves.

I now see that several of the vendors have older H4 stock and considerably lower prices than ones labelled "new" - but I have no idea what the change is, if any.  Are the current H4 offerings using different tooling?