That's why I said it was easier to sell or trade yours for one that's pre-painted, about the only way to do windows with molded on mullions is with a paint marker and then with great care. 

I mentioned the SP diesel in the second post.

I bought some at a recent show, they're certainly out there. 

Most narrow gauge lines went to their end running steam.   

D&RGW ran into the 1960s that way; EBT ceased in 1955 as a steam road; the Southern Pacific narrow gauge had one diesel in the mid-late 1950s but from what I've read it wasn't very successful and a steam engine was kept ready and often used as back-up.  The Maine narrow gauge was abandoned before WWII.  The Catskill Mountain RR was abandoned during WWI.  And so on.  There really is no "transition era" for narrow gauge lines, they either went out of business or got standard gauged.     

Plus, the only Bachmann "diesel" is the Plymouth, which is a very small engine that wouldn't physically be capable of replacing the large steam engines, which means until someone comes out with a good GE-type On30 diesel you're left with kitbashes or craftsman kits to build your own.  (I'm waiting for a damaged Flyer Baldwin switcher body to turn up cheap to build something with). 

Sell it and buy one with red trim.   They seem to be less desirable, so unless it's out of production they can be had pretty reasonable.  I thought about doing the opposite a while back but I waited and got the all black one I wanted a little later. 

Retailers are likely pulling out because they can't compete with The Favorite Spot and other sellers that dump these pieces on eBay with no reserve.   Those auctions show in most cases what an actual market price should be for these products; people are unwilling to pay full retail, in some cases they're even unwilling to pay 50% of retail - I picked up some Stock Cars to resell and have sold a whopping 2 of them, I may end up parting them out for other projects instead.  It's not worth my selling them much cheaper than I've been trying to now. 

Somewhere I've read of guys who used to break in the older Athearn HO diesels using some kind of a goop of what I want to say was a tooth polishing compound of some sort, I think it was an over the counter stuff you could buy anywhere, but a couple of steps harsher than toothpaste (maybe it was even meant for use with dentures).   Does anyone else remember seeing that?  You put the stuff on, ran the engine for a short time (on rollers was fine), then cleaned it thoroughly and put some normal lube in. 

In any case, maybe that would resolve this engine's gear noise -


And John is a good guy, I made sure to buy a couple things from him at Springfield MA -

None of mine will run on DC once they've been run DCC, even the one I didn't change the address on, so you may need to use the DCC control to make them analog enabled again. 

They do sell an undec you could paint and letter rather easily.  Not much to these cars.  Or just scratchbuild one - Evergreen car side, Bachmann frame and trucks, Grandt Line hardware -

I have two identical outside frame Forneys - same stock number - one's noisy, one's quiet.  I assume the gears just need a throrough break in to quiet it down.

I used sifted real cinders scooped up from the railroad ROW for mine; for the main reason that I've used about 3 1/2 gallons (with about a gallon sifted out not used) to do a 10x14 layout - I don't want to think about what that would cost to use Woodland Scenics or a similar ballast product; just based on how many times I refilled my shaker bottle there's at least a dozen small bag's worth on there now with about 8 feet of track left to do.

The cinders were free -

I get something similar with an MRC Prodigy Express - what I've found is the locos sometimes cause shorts crossing switches or if the coupler gladhand otherwise touches the wrong rail, and that causes this one to loose signal for some reason.

It didn't do that on the older MRC Prodigy, the original one with a dial locomotive selector, so I'm not sure what to think. 

The 2-6-6-2 has enough weight to the front driver set that it seems to stay on the rails pretty well.  The Forney is more finicky because it balances on the drivers - if it was set up more like a real one, with some articulation of the drivers in relation to the boiler, instead of making the rear truck do all the compensating on curves, it would probably track better.   

My problem with the Forney is it's the most sensitive to elevation changes and track humps, it about needs some type F ("shelf") couplers like tank cars use to keep things coupled to it. 

Athearn's streamline passenger cars, if you can find them (and they made tons, I can hardly give them away at shows), would look fine and will operate on 18" curves. 

I'd want $10-$15 just for the golden spike car were it seperate, so $30 with shipping for the set is insanely lowball (when you figure shipping will run a good $10-$15 alone).  I've gotten more for much cheaper sets in their box. 

Generally, the loco is worth $10-$15, the cars and transformer $3-$4 each, brass track has virtually no value, and other accessories can vary.  A set in the original box is generally worth $40 and up, depending on who made it and what's included. 

Older Bachmann is not that collectible right now, but the best bet would be to run it on eBay and see where it goes if you want to sell it. 

Because of the apparent age of this loco, it should be checked for pot-metal fatigue; certain of the Bachmann engines from the early 1970s suffered this malady where the cast metal used in the frames and weights swell up, crack, and fall apart as they age.