Bachmann "The John Bull" HO train set review

[Darth Santa Fe]

This review is on Bachmann's historic "The John Bull" HO scale train set.[:D]



Out of the three historic train sets Bachmann has made, this one's the best.[:D] The engine, tender and cars are all very well detailed. Almost all the detail is seperate, with wire grab irons, seperate plastic piping, bell, handrails, and many other details. The engine's boiler has wood detail molded in, and the tender also has wood-grain detail molded in. The engine has nicely detailed painting, with a light green boiler, brass trim (not real brass), black firebox and smokebox, and dark green footboards. The tender and cars are dark green and black, and the paint is very smooth. No colors run into eachother.[:D] The front pilot is a seperate assembly, being held on by the front drivers and a pin, and is also sprung to keep the pilot wheels from derailing.[:D] The headlight box is hollow and has a clear piece on the front, so a light bulb can be installed easily, if you'd ever want it to light up.[:D] The smokestack has nice pointed-edge detail on top, which looks good. The only thing missing from this set that's in the other two is an engineer, but one could be easily added on. The tender has six seperate grab irons on it, and six other detail parts, including a large part on the roof that looks like the "dog houses" on more modern steam engines, two platforms, a large pipe and the sideframes. The sideframes are black and have very finely molded shock-absorber and brake details. The cars are well detailed, with finely molded end railings, braces and other details. They also have interiors, so passengers can be added very easily.[:D] The window "glass" is a large piece of transparent yellow plastic, which makes the interior barely visible. The trucks are seperate, and the sides are painted a semi-dark tan. All the wheels in the set have spokes molded into them, and the engine drive wheels and tender wheels are blackened metal.



The engine is too small for a mechanism, so Bachmann powered the large tender instead. It started and ran smoothly and quietly through it's whole speed range, and reached a maximum speed of 61 scale MPH at 12 volts, which is pretty fast for an 1830s steam engine. It looks more realistic running around 15-20 SMPH. I got it to run very steadily at a minimum of 3.3 SMPH. At 12 volts while running free, it drew 0.05 amps, and stalled at 12 volts it drew a maximum of 0.3 amps. The tender has more than enough traction to pull its three cars, and I'm guessing it could haul another 6 or 7 passenger cars of the same type.[:D] The entire tender is filled with a split metal frame, making it very heavy, and has no room for DCC. The motor is in the top of the frame, so no weight can be milled out. All the gears (except for the brass worm) are durable black plastic, and should last a long time. The motor is an open-frame type with a 3-pole skewed armature, and works as smoothly and quietly as a high quality 5-pole motor. The engine wheels don't have needle-point bearings, but they roll freely enough to keep from sliding on the track. The passenger car wheels all have needle-point bearings and roll very freely. The wheel flanges are slightly larger than the recommended .025", but they should still be small enough to work on track down to code 70.[:D]

Bachmann's John Bull is a very nice quality and affordable set, and should please anyone who likes pre-1900s steam engines.[:D][:D][:D]