Hello Percy!
I have some tools who've been dying to meet you!
Pic of the cab area,might be tough to add interior details. Why bother with a removable roof if theres no real cab area to drop a figure into?
Side view, overall this is a nice looking British profile industrial engine, its big, as big as the 1/20 Porter, and unlike my LGB Porters, too big for my 21"D curves. But what the heck I've been looking for a couple of British engines since the day I started this scale.
Houston we may have a Problem here:
Wiring issues aside (its NMRA wired, not Large Scale standard)
...Found this sizable glitch:
Thats a STANDARD unmodified LGB car next to Percy, there is about a 1/2" hieght difference between the couplers. The tongue of Percy will bend low enough to couple but not the other way around, no way. Everything from Thomas, the coachs, and the trucks will all need a serious mod to get the couplers to standard height...
Does Philly do this sort of stuff to us on purpose?
Have fun with your trains
No Vic,
The problem is that the LGB stuff will have the couplings at the BERNE gauge height and the British stuff will have the couplings at the RCH gauge height. When the locos pulled the "Wagons Lit" from the ferries to Waterloo they had a "coupling wagon" with a connector for RCH at one end and a BERNE connector at the other.
regards
ralph
The Home of Articulated Ugliness
According to the Bachmann and others, somewhere in the box there are adaptors that will lower the couplers back down to LGB standard hieght
The problem is that unless you know there is an issue with non-standard coupler hieght, you wont know to look for the adaptors before you toss the box out...like I did. D'oh!
So...
ANYONE GETTING A BACHMANN THOMAS ITEM: LOOK FOR THOSE ADAPTORS
It's all part of the classified wheel/track/coupler standards being encouraged by one and pushed by another.
Now you know exactly what "standards" mean. They mean once accepted, they WILL be changed.
There is more coming.....a lot of it from folks who don't even OWN any #1 gauge stuff.
Did you like the backwards running on Thomas?
Real class.
However, I have it on good authority that Bachmann will handle everything in-house. Did you stop to think why they put the high-mounted, non-standard hook and loops ON the loco and left the lowering blocks out? One would have thought it would have been the other way around.
The backwards running aspects was a disappointment but hey the British also drive on the wrong side of the road too so the engine going backward isn't that big a deal for me on my tiny layout
That can be fixed, but the coupler thing is something I cannot understand unless you intentionally intended your stuff to be compatable only with other Thomas rolling stock and not so much with other brands out there, but if that was your goal why not just supply your own unique coupler thats incompatable with standard LGB hooks? Strange....
Debating whether to keep the hooks or switch to knuckles (not very proto) or check the Britty dealers for more proto style chain couplers.
vsmith Hello Percy! I have some tools who've been dying to meet you!
vsmith Houston we may have a Problem here: Does Philly do this sort of stuff to us on purpose?
Watch out Percy! I see Elmo lurking in the background!
Vic, Thanks for the heads up.
Tom Trigg
Sorry to hear you threw out the parts included with the set. Bachmann generally does a good job of providing extra parts with their models and the Percy set I got has a full bag of parts along with a large instruction manual and DVD.
I am currently running Percy and Thomas with the loop and hook couplers provided but Thomas will soon get a Kadee 830s because he is a really useful engine.
Merry Christmas
Stan
I tossed the parts out without even realizing the need to reset the couplers, seams to me the Thomas items should be shipped with the adaptor installed so kids can couple up to anything as soon as they open the boxes, then if Thomas-philes want the higher proto coupler setting (is there such a thing in Thomas world?) then they can remove the adaptor and raise it up, as it is theres going to be alot of confused parents and kids out there...
Anyway, another Thomas owner on MLS is going to hook me up with the adaptors from his Thomas set, so shortly all be well on Sodor again...
...until Chief Mechanic Jigsaw arrives to perform Percy's face-ectomy!
vsmithThats a STANDARD unmodified LGB car next to Percy, there is about a 1/2" hieght difference between the couplers. The tongue of Percy will bend low enough to couple but not the other way around, no way. Everything from Thomas, the coachs, and the trucks will all need a serious mod to get the couplers to standard height... Does Philly do this sort of stuff to us on purpose?
Hi
I bought an "HO" Percy for my two year old Grandson, took it apart to put in a decoder didn't not like what I saw, so I stuck a Kadee coupler on the back put it in front of one of my "B" units. Schazamm I have a DCC Percy. IMHO this Bachmann is a piece of junk. I took the pinon gear off and added some weight so the wheels would turn. now Percy can lead a train. I checked around and some guys say that even when they remotored it they didn't think much of the way it works.i wonder how the larger scale performs?
Happy MRing.
Lee
So far no complaints about running, its a very light engine but it pulls well on level track. I doubt it was ever ment to pull 15 cars but then nether was the prototype Avonhill shunter.
Very smooth start, runs well at low speed, doesnt stall on my LGB switches like my Bmann Saddletanker does. Looking forward to adding Thomas and few Britty style cars even if I have to sell off quite a bit more other stuff to make room.
Sounds as if you are telling us this is a decent piece of equipment, if we have little ones of the appropriate age range. Think I just might get myself a set as there should be a new crop of grandkids comming along in the next couple of years.
Yes, its good stuff, just a few tiffs, the coupler height adaptors not be installed before shipping and the backwards NMRA wiring standards being the only two I have, theres a fix for the NMRA wiring issue listed on MLS (just basicly swap the power pickup sides) and add the supplied adaptors if you want to run any other brand of cars with them. No biggies. If you have the cash and like the lineup, go for it.
Bucksco
...and I thought my review was overwhelmingly in the positive
The face-ectomy has begun...Cheif Surgeon...err, Mechanic Jigsaw was very disappointed at how easily the doughboy face was -ectomized from the body.
Will complile a few photos as I go and post in a new thread...
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