It's about time to bring the Heavy Mountain tooling out of mothballs.

I know some of the roads stagnated but the C&O's were gone from shelves within the first month of release. I need a couple more and I know a lot of people looking for their first. I have been offered $500 for one of mine at a show over a year ago. You could just bring back multiple road numbers of C&O with tender variations and justify a new production batch. You could get crazy and make a new pilot, borrow the EM-1 tender and make a pretty close B&O T-3/4 Mountain.

Just a public thanks for Bachmann for the N scale EM-1.

When the HO Emma was shown back at the 2012 at the Worlds Greatest Hobby show the Bach-Man suggested that I should be patient and stop working on my kitbash. Now it's official.

I will have multiples even though the loco didn't run on the region of the B&O I model. They will look great at Ntrak shows, double headed, pulling hopefully, a 100 hoppers or so.

So you don't have to go hunting for it....

http://www.bachmanntrains.com/NMRA_2012.pdf

Which loco does this set come with. Bachmann doesn't have a picture up on their site yet. Walthers does but it shows the 4-6-0. The description of the set is that it comes with an 0-6-0.

http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/160-24020

So, it is an 0-6-0, the 4-6-0, or a 4-6-0 with the front pilot truck removed?

Are we going to see replacement parts from any of the recent releases? It's been two years since any new parts have been added to the list. Since then we have seen the release of:

4-6-0
2-10-2
GP9
RS
PeterWitt Trolley
70T
Revised Doodlebug
Doodlebug Coach
Cabooses
etc. etc.

They have arrived at the shop and I brought mine home.

The doodlebug is ok, nothing new, just a rehash of the previous doodlebug with a new motor, DCC, and lighting. The overly complex pivoting rear coupler is gone thank goodness. I'm surprised and disapointed that the oversized steel steps and stirrups were held over from the previous versions, there are much better methods out there to replicate these now. It runs quieter than my original one but it's still not a quiet drive by any shape of the imagination. The lighting is a bit bright and orange for the interior of the car but that should be easy to tone down.

Edit: Found the issue with the drive. The truck gear case sides are held together with four screws. All four were over tightened and caused the idler gears in the truck to bind. I half turn on each and it is 100% smoother and dead quiet now.




The coach is a different story, this is a great piece. It has a lot of firsts for Bachmann (at least in a piece of rolling stock). It has needle point pickup trucks that roll as free as any passenger car I own. The lighting suffers from the same orange lights that the doodlebug has but the match at least. The couplers are mounted on a kinematic coupler box that moves out as the coupler swings to allow for tighter radius opperation. Unfortunately, the couplers are so long that it is not really needed because the car sets a 1/4" from the doodlebug. The roof detail is excellent and beats the the very popular Microtrains Heavyweights. Underframe add on details are nice. Window detail on the lavatory is very well done.  The ride height and general proportions are very good and match up well with other cars out there.



Bachmann would do well to bring out this coach seprately. If they could release it at a $40 or less price point, they would do exceptionally well. If the car doesn't come out, make the parts available for the kitbashers. The 4 wheel trucks and roof alone make many more cars possible by combining parts from the various offerings.

Please offer the coach seprately at a reasonable price!!

Will we see any more of these? The C&O version was very unique and probably the reason they are sold out. It has many details that are needed to create other mountains. I wouldn't mind another number or two for C&O also. The undec w/vc16 tender doesn't have the valve gear, cab or trailing truck that the full C&O version has so I can't just buy the undec and make more C&O's.

The title says it all......

There are a few tweeks that need to be addressed but I will take it anyway I can get it. I guess I need to finish my kitbash to complete the cycle and make sure that it is announced next year.

If you do bring it to N, please fix the sand filler hatches to match the majority of production. The current design shown only matches the first 7 loco's with the "wide/early" sand boxes. The example shown at the show is an imposability with "narrow/late" sandboxes. The sand filler hatches should be in-line down the length of the loco instead of side by side (left and right of the center line) Only the first 7 loco's were built with the side by side hatches and none of them were built with the "narrow" sandbox.

Pretty please......

How much begging is it going to take to get Bachmann to offer these coaches seperately? These would make great commuter coaches to put behind the 4-6-0 for local passenger service.

It's the night before the NMRA National convention train show. What will be announced this weekend?

Just looked through the 2011 catalog and the C&O version of the Heavy Mountain is gone along with the C&O painted and undecorated Vanderbilt tender for those that would like to convert one of the others.  I guess you can still buy the Undec Mountain w/vanderbilt and decorate your own but considering the C&O version is the most correct version of all of them, it's odd that you are no longer going to offer these. I guess they were a product of their own sucess, we won't see another run with C&O until some of the others sell out.

Since there is nothing really new in the 2011 catalog, I guess we are waiting till the NMRA show for this years new announcements?

I waited for this loco for a long time. There have been quite a few topics on other forums about this loco and quite a few comments both good and bad. Now that they are finally here I have one in my hands to inspect, I love it. This is a great little loco that is pushing the envelope on what can be done with a small loco.

For those of you who experience problems and don't want to send the loco back I have compiled a list of the issues and fixes for them. Below is a list of the complaints that have shown up on the various forums and cures for them. Many of these issues are tweeks that Bachmann needs to fix on the assembly line before the next production run. Not all loco's exhibit these complaints as I have 2 that ran flawless out of the box, even with the pilot trucks installed upside down. These are all simple fixes that can be cured in a few minutes.

#1 - Pilot truck derails on anything less than perfect track work.

The fix is pretty simple. I had devised a mechanical way to fix it until another person suggested that the pilot truck may be on upside down. Low and behold that is the problem. The pilot trucks were installed upside down. The way they come factory, the leaf spring detail is upside down and there is no verticle clearance for the connecting arm that the pilot truck is attached to. Flipping the pilot truck over so that the painted side is up and the bare side is down fixes this issue.

You loco should look like this when correct....



#2 - There are many complaints of jackrabbit starts and no slow speed throttle control.

The fix again is simple. The decoder has a substancial Vmin setting from the factory. The decoder is setup for a standard motor which needs a bit of a kickstart to get going. This loco has a coreless motor in it which doesn't like the kick start. Setting the Vmin (CV2) = 0 fixes the problem and the loco will crawl a tie at a time. This fixes the loco control on both DC and DCC. On DCC it will now crawl a tie at a time and takes well over a minute to move 1 inch.

#3 - I had a side rod fall off of one loco I was testing.

The drivers are cast metal which I think is great. the drivers have a cast bushing in them so the side rods are not wearing on a screw.  Because of the metal driver centers, the crank pins thread into the bushings and are screws/bolts. These need to have locktite of some sort on them or the right side crank pins will constantly unscrew themselves.

#4 - Sketchy pickup from the tender.

One of the loco's I tested had flashing under the leaf spring wipers in the tender that was keeping the wiper from contacting the truck post. As I started looking at the others, they were barely making contact. The posts need to be taller or the tender frame needs to be thinner so that the wipers make better contact.

#5 - Loco wobbles at low speed.

Some amount of wobble is normal, especially for a short wheelbase loco such as this. I picked up a second loco for myself yesterday and this one had the wobble pretty bad. When I flipped the loco over with it running, I noticed a distinct amount of what I thought was runout on a traction tire driver. Upon closer inspection, the flange on the driver varried in thickness. This also caused a bit of a click that some have complained of. With the loco upside down and running, I held a file to the track side of the flange and used it as an improvised lathe to reshape the driver flange to the proper profile. This fix may be a bit much for the average person I will admit but after doing it, the loco runs with almost zero wobble now.


I still love these loco's and for me, these are easy fixes but for the average consumer, this will make or break the loco. Nothing here is hard to fix and for the avearage tinker it might take 15 minutes to go over the whole loco. The issue is, we shouldn't have to.

I just wish Bachmann used a little stronger product testing so we the consumer aren't the ones coming up with the fixes. There is no reason this loco should not have been perfect out of the box. It has all the makings of a great loco and the micro coreless motor that these come with is impressive. If you need a product tester that actually runs the loco's before signing off on them, I'm available. I'm sure most of these issues will be solved by the time the next batch arrives. As far as I know, this batch is pretty much sold out already. Similar QC issues affected the first run of the Spec 2-8-0's and now they are one of the best steam loco's on the market.

Thank you for listening to many, many, many customer requests for the Ten Wheeler. It looks like it will be a nice loco. Our shop already has orders for 4 of them since they were announced on Friday.

One comment that seems to keep coming up is the size of the tender. For me it doesn't really matter because the loco matches nothing B&O so I will be in full kitbash mode to put one of these to use. If the standard USRA tender is going to be the tender used on the loco, many will be disapointed. From most of the pictures I have looked at over the weekend, a straight sided body designed to fit the slope back tender chassis would be the best answer. If keeping cost down and using existing tooling is a factor, at least swaping to the short USRA tender could be considered.

Model Power has announced a new production run of their steam loco's, to be due before the end of the year. There have been updates to their loco's, including traction tires included now, and knuckle couplers. The one upgrade missing that most were hoping for is an allwheels live tender, similar to the Bachmann tenders.

A common upgrade to MP steam is to put a Bachmann tender on them. The improved pickup is a no brainer and the better rolling Bachmann tenders helps in the pulling power department.

The N&W aux. tender is already gone....please don't let the others pass. There are many people that will be needing them shortly. I think I own more Bachmann tenders than I do loco's right now because they are such a good improvement to older equipment.

What were the Toy Fair announcements if any? I am primarily interested in N scale but any announcements or pictures would be nice. I noticed the Thomas annoucement on the main page and the newletter with HO 2-8-0 being bumped down to standard line w/DCC.

Anything else?

  As many may have noticed, this past week, there has been a pretty heated discussion on the new can motors that have been showing up in recent Bachmann N scale loco's both on the Atlas forums and Trainboard. It was discovered that the advertised 5 pole / skew wound motors in the C&O H-5 (2-6-6-2) was really a 3 pole straight wound motor. This in itself is not a big deal to me as the loco ran very good as is. As long as the loco runs well, I don't care what motor is in it. I defended Bachmann's choice because it has allowed us to have some very nice new releases. Unfortunately, I can no longer take that side.

  The problem with the motor is they are showing signs of an unusually short life span. This is the reason it was discovered to not be as advertised. The motor in question died in under 20 hours. It was thought to be a fluke and was replaced by another motor ordered from Bachmann.  It also died in the same time frame. When it did, the owner took it apart to see why and found that it was a 3 pole armature and had failed because the comutator had worn through. The pictures of this started the debate and discussion.

  There are currently 3 others running their 2-6-6-2's to see if they suffer the same fate. Unfortunately, one more has just died at the 24 hour mark. The other motors aren't that far along quite yet, except for one that had been disassembled for inspection before the test, it seems to be running well.

  In a reply from Bachmann, it is claimed that this new can motor is a smaller/better alternative than previous motors. Please exlpain how? Why can I get more than 3000 hours out of a $50 standard line 0-6-0 before it wears the side rods or flanges off of the wheels, yet a $200 2-6-6-2 barely makes it 24 hours? I have had an 0-6-0 last for 6 months, 10 hours a day, 7 days a week in our store display with simple, periodic cleaning of the loco. This is impossible with the new can motors, you can't get in them.

  These motors need to be addressed. This is not an acceptable level of quality, especially for a "Spectrum" level product. If you ran your train an hour a day, it wouldn't last a month. I often will run 3-4 hours or more straight on a train show weekend. A couple weekends and it seems a loco with one of these motors would be worn out.

  I work at a HobbyTown and order the model railroad merchandise for our store and influence the 5 others owned by us. It is going to be real hard to even think about ordering more of these loco's with the new motors in them until the problem is addressed. I don't want to see customers coming back in a month complaining that their loco has died.

The current loco's that I know of with the new can motor include:

HHP8
H16-44
2-6-6-2
4-8-2 Heavy Mountain
44T
DD40Ax

This is what it could look like.







It would be done tonight if Microscale decals for B&O steam were anywhere close to the right font. I didn't feel like dusting off the Alps tonight and fighting with creating deluxe gold lettering. I'll work on that tommorrow. Oh, and an engineer and decoder.

Are there any plans to expand on the web sites parts listings? The N scale parts page started with 13 items and is down to 9 now so somebody besides me must be buying from it.

I would like to see more tender truck variations, especially 3 axle trucks from the J class tender, and other steam loco parts. Replacement driver sets as offered in the HO section would be nice also.

My SD45R that I have been working on for not quite a year is done, except for a few minor things which I may or may not address......



The gap between the long hood and the cab in the above shot being one of the things I want to address.....


The wiring to make it all work....left to right...
Ngineering Ditchlight simulator
Custom built momentary contact (Styrene sheet with PB tabs) to switch lights from constant to alternating (press on horn to acctuate)
Ngineering DC Power unit to power number boards independent of direction.
Under DC power unit scrap of original light board to use as a solder pad to bring it all together and power the headlight and tail light.

Brass handrails with Gold Medal stantions.
BLMA Fans and Grabs...may still add wipers.
Kato fuel tank and plow.
Scratch built, socketed and replaceable ditchlights.
Short hood is a resin casting from and Atlas SD to get the ratchet brake detail.
Fine stainless mesh radiator grilles.

More pictures here: http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/showgallery.php/cat/1767

The shell and molding detail on these loco's is very good, there are a few things that just don't set right (Rides to high, shape above radiator grilles is wrong....both corrected in this model) that corrected would make these top notch. If Bachmann would give up on the inboard pickup system and go to needlepoint axle pickups like everybody else, these loco's would be a lot more popular. Leave the axle and wheel wipers to the HO guys. You proved you can do it with the steam tenders, now please do it with diesels.

This has been fun but it's time to get back to steam.

How do I go about getting the DC power cord for the EZ-Track trainset transformer? A DC extension is listed but I have a couple customers looking to replace the red wire that plugs into the standard trainset transformer using a headphone style jack.

I called Customer Service this morning and left a message with no reply yet. This is a part that should be available as a normal stocking part, not a parts special order. If it is, can somebody point me too it? I have had 3 customers in the past week looking for the same part.

Tony Hines
HobbyTown USA (Cincinnati)