Anyone have any details on this?  It's basically a blue plastic case about 8"x8"x1" that doubles as a battery pack and contains a Bachmann N 0-4-0 shifter, 41' plug-door reefer, and caboose, except the engine has a green boiler, red cab, red tender, pastel green reefer (body and frame), pastel yellow caboose, and the track in the set has pink(!) ties.  Reefer and caboose have some minimal roadname markings.   The pieces are straight Bachmann, marked Bachmann.  I found one some time back on eBay, for sale in England, but they knew about as much as I do.  I just wondered about when it was made and what market it was intended for.  Presumably there's some reason why it has the Kader name on it instead of Bachmann. 

I think you could convert the original caboose into a neat little plow.  Just put a wedge blade on one end, a swing-out blade on the side opposite the angle of the wedge, and move the cupola to the end.  Freelanced, but it would look "right" -

When new they sold at a discount, after a few weeks you could buy one for $35-$45 without too much trouble, which had to be about cost and about half the retail price.  Now that they're OOP, the prices will go back up.

That's a pretty normal pattern for most new model railroading products - they sell great for a few weeks, then they can be had cheap until the supplies dry up; then the prices climb on sites like eBay until either they get crazy high or the product is reissued.   Some manufacturers have taken to making really short runs of products to try to combat the problem. 

I scratchbuilt a Carson & Colorado drover caboose - sort of an oddball combine with a cupola that has a clerestory roof over the passenger compartment only (one of two, the other had a plain roof on the entire car and was the only one to survive to today).  They're about 43 feet long, a tad too big for 18" curves but otherwise don't look bad.  Have since decided it's too big for what I want to do, I sold my 2-8-0s and have the 2-6-0 on eBay now even though I'm not sure I want to let that one go.

Early 1960s RMC magazines are a wealth of drawings of 3-foot gauge cars; I picked up some mid-WWII Model Railroaders with drawings of some D&RGW cars as well - the latter have me tempted to try and do a reefer, perhaps subtracting 2 feet from each end to take it to 36 feet rather than 40.  With Evergreen car siding and careful measuring it's pretty easy to bang stuff out and not spend a fortune on it. 

I have one from ~1998 that runs fine.  I recall that maybe the first run had an issue, a hobby shop I worked at supplied one to run on an overhead track in a store and it came back with some kind of failure, but they got it fixed under warranty.  That engine had been run by then a good 12 hours a day for several months, too. 

Of course to remove the DCC means you can't use the headlight, since the short is in the loco elsewhere meaning the PC board would need to be amputated as well and the LED in the headlight won't last long on 12-16V.


In any case, after many many emails, explaining the decoder issue several times, the woman who was the most help taking a few days off, I finally was assured if I sent it in they'd replace it, so I sent it in last Friday and checked in today to find out they've already sent a new replacement.  Hopefully the new one arrives in good shape and I can move on to the next thing. 

Pocher is Pocher, not related to Rivarossi in the least beyond both companies' products being imported by AHM.  Some Pocher items were most recently imported by IHC; I had one of the engines and never even took it out of the box to see if it was still Pocher or perhaps the dies were sold to Mehano (was one of those, buy dirt cheap at one train show, reprice and put out and sell at the next show things). 

So the dies to this car may still exist, but anything related to IHC is up in the air with the bankruptcy of Mehano and the illness of the guy who runs IHC. 

Incredibly, the engine just about caught on fire, for real, tonight.  I've run it around a 10x14 loop about 4 or 5 times; I start it out tonight it gets about 8 feet and quits.  Will go in reverse but not forward.  I noticed a burned smell, so I pull the coal load and take the decoder out.  It's melted the shrink wrap over one of the chips.  Applying power again trying to see the problem, the chip glows bright orange-white and smokes!

Further playing with the dummy pins I'm guessing one of the components on the tender PC board has failed, as with one side installed it creates a dead short and one resistor gets hot. 

But had I left it to run and break in and it did this, or it quit inside a tunnel where I couldn't see the problem as fast as I did, there's a good shot it would have caught fire before the circuit breaker tripped. 

I'm just about beyond words at this one.  I have portable transistor radios from the 60s that have been beat around and work just fine - even if this thing is old stock, the PC board has a June 2006 date on it, it's four years old tops, and stuff is dead on it already?

Uh, no, I bought it from someone else as The Favorite Spot is apparently not interested in my business.  I made the mistake of asking them a question some time back (I asked if they could run a particular catalog number in an auction format listing) and after a very rude response found myself blocked from bidding at all.  Which makes me unsure I'd want to buy anything from these people - if they treat you like dirt for asking a question, they're going to be complete jerks when there's a real problem like a non-op loco or the wrong item gets shipped.  Inquiries since asking about the block have been ignored.   I would highly suggest avoiding doing business with those people.  They apparently feel they sell enough they're above having customer service. 


This is why I said apparently some eBay sellers are more equal than others, apparently they only warranty the stuff from the big money buyer.  Then again they probably have to, because I'm sure TFS will tell you to pound sand anyways. 



I guess I'll spell this out from the beginning again just to be clear:

The Forney I bought about three years ago did not operate; this would be Forney #1.   

Last week I jumped on an eBay auction for Forney #2 simply because it was a good deal.

Using the decoder from Forney #2 installed in Forney #1 I determined that decoder #1 is programmed such that it won't operate on regular DC.  Problem solved. 

So I sent out my damaged DCC control for repair.

In the meantime, Forney #2 arrived in the wrong box and with the cylinder saddle broken.  New Problem. 

Since the engine was new in box with no signs of use, I contacted Bachmann to see if they could supply me with the repair part for it rather than send it in.  I provided a copy of my reciept and a link to the eBay auction.  I figured it would be cheaper for them to let me repair the engine, plus it wouldn't risk further damage to it sending it back.  I never contacted my eBay seller about the problem. 

After multiple emails with Bachmann's warranty department I was told that because they didn't like the seller I purchased from, the only way to get it repaired would be for me to send it in with the $30 fee, they refused to send me the replacement part to repair it or to send the headlight I didn't get because the loco was boxed incorrectly. 


In the course of the emails the woman from the warranty department stated that Bachmann won't warranty items sold via a clearance sale.  (yet they'll honor it on The Favorite Spot's fire sale auctions??)  This isn't stated in the paperwork and it's unlikely it would hold up in court, but of course it's unlikely anyone would sue them since it would cost more to go to court than it's worth.  My response was to point out that it's not my problem they wholesale to someone (The Favorite Spot) who retails from that price, so that other hobby sellers can't compete and eventually take the items collecting dust on their shelves, eBay them to recover some of their investment, and write off the loss.

So what I've learned from this experience is if I wish Bachmann to honor their warranty, I need to lie about where and when I purchase Bachmann products such that it will convince them the item is covered by their standards.  I used to have my own store; I have a cash register left; a phony receipt is not a big deal, but it disgusts me that I should have to go to such a length particularly now that I find out this is a known problem at Bachmann. 

It's tempting me to put all this stuff up for sale on eBay and dump the On30 idea entirely, between the jerks selling it and the company that won't stand behind it, it's not very much fun.  Which is why most of it has been put up for about two years in the first place.

Why would I replace the decoder when I have no means to control it?  I sent that out to it's manufacturer (MRC) for repair this week.  Swapping decoders between the old Forney and the new one revealed it works fine, the decoder is just programmed such that it won't run without a controller set to address it properly. 


But to find that out I had to buy a second locomotive that I happened to find by coincedence on eBay, and that locomotive got some damage in transit to me.  All I wanted was a new cylinder saddle assembly, and possibly a new headlight, one to repair a broken part and one since I simply have none. 

The warranty department, in essence, told me to eat it - nothing but excuses because they want $30 out of me so they can fix something I can swap out in five or ten minutes myself.   

You would think that, but I emailed the service person a copy of the PayPal reciept, probably the mistake was in including a link to the auction listing too.  They don't like my eBay seller, is what it boils down to.  And someone goofed up at that seller too, somewhere along the line there must have been an inside frame and an outside frame side by side that got put away in each other's boxes - that's why I have no "B" headlight, it comes installed on the inside frame.  But the engine had no wheel wear at all, and it's common to take something out of the box in a store so people can see it.   

It seems hard to believe, but my guess is Bachmann was losing too much money on warranty stuff with the lifetime warranty, which is why they went to the one year warranty.  Okay, fine, but is it so bad they have to be this tight and specific about it?     We're talking like $5 cost worth of parts here and I'll fix it myself, it's not like I magically expected a complete new locomotive to show up in the mail, or even expected them to fix it for me. 

Thanks, but I currently have no functional DCC control.  Sent it out for repair today -


Meanwhile, the warranty department was of zero help trying to get a couple pieces to repair the second Forney properly.  Even though the locomotive is brand new, apparently unless you buy it from just the right eBay seller, they treat it as used and you have to pay to have it serviced.  I began to think I was dealing with The Favorite Spot's (complete lack of) customer service.  The person I dealt with had the gaul to say that if you buy your Bachmann product in a clearance sale, they won't honor the warranty then either.  Says nothing about this in the paperwork, so it wouldn't hold up in court, but who's going to sue them over that? 

What I learned is when I have a warranty issue with a Bachmann product, I would most likely need to lie about where and when I purchased the item if I want them to stand behind it.


So if anyone has an extra Type B headlight, I could use one, have several oil lights and Type A's I could swap.  In fact it would be nice to get about three of them so I could put them on the tender also.  I don't know what I'll do about the broken cylinder saddle, I guess live with it, since they aren't listed seperately.

I recently found a deal on a second Forney and it came today.  Switching the decoder from it to the non-operational one, it worked fine.  This tells me I apparently have the decoder programmed in a way that it won't run on standard DC. 

I guess I should have been more clear - what I'm getting at is what is the actual tractive effort of each prototype of the locomotives Bachmann has released, and what does that translate to in the number of cars it could pull in normal service based on the sizes of Bachmann's cars scaled up to full size?  I wouldn't be surprised if some of the models will pull more than the real thing might have been able to.  And I realize grades and such will have an effect on this, just looking for a starting point. 

Has anyone thought to put together a chart for the Bachmann locos that shows what their relative prototype tractive effort translates to in number of average freight cars?

I'm just curious what a realistic train length is, some of these engines will certainly pull more cars than the average layout could handle, and others.. well I can make my inside frame 4-4-0 stall on grades pretty easily.  It's a pretty light-duty locomotive.