Similar situation to David B. My Tyco UxxC from the mid 70"s. It was my first loco, never ran well and has been on the dead line for the last 20+ years. But I'll never part with it.
Modeling the Cleveland and Pittsburgh during the PennCentral era starting on the Cleveland lakefront and ending in Mingo junction
Considering price, reputation, era of construction, etc - by far my worst TWO locos were the two Broadway Limited Heavy Mikados that I had to tear completely down and rebuild as if I was bulding a kit. And I had to make parts from incorrect parts because Braodway could not supply the right parts - these locos have been made by many different vendors for Broadway, and while the basic design is the same, there are about 3-4 different "versions" with slight differences.
As a side note, it is interesting to read others experiances and compare with your own.
I bought two Genesis Mikados, neither one has ever cracked a drive gear.
I have two Mantua/Tyco Generals, both run flawlessly and pull well.
I had a Lindberg switcher, it was too fast but otherwise ran fine.
And, of course this thread started with a "bad" piece of Bachmann, I have over 40 Bachmann locos and have had only three problem ones - all made good by Bachmann - can't say that about Broadway.
A lot of locos people have mentioned are just train set junk, and that was known fact the day they were made - let alone now, 10, 20 ,30 years or more later - regardless of brand.
I don't own any Athearn SD70 whatevers because I do not model that era, or collect anything outside my modeling interest, but every piece of Athearn I have owned owned was just fine - especially considering the price and era of some of it.
On the low end, you get what you pay for. On the high end you sometimes get an unpleasant surprise.
In the middle you often get sold value, even if it requires a little modeling skill to make it "perfect".
Sheldon
My worst? Ok.let's see then.
HO.
Hands down it was the Lindberg SW1 I bought in the early 60..This locomotive had a spring drive belt and would slink its way down the track----if the spring didn't break first.
N Scale.
Back in 82 I bought a Model Power Alco C420 that shake going down the track..I named it "old shaky" and it became a "stored" locomotive next to the engine house.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Three come to mind as the absolute worst that have resulted in my just breaking them down for parts.
Older (80's) Bachmann 2-8-0's (blech). Older Bachmann PRR K-4's. Followed by an AHM S-2. I don't hold the older models against Bachmann though.
For worst performance in relation to cost for an out-of-the-box loco, my BLI NYC Hudson from the first run. Not so good running. Bad quartering, etc. Lot of work to get it to run smooth.
My worst ones 4 MTH SD70ACe that were purchased last January.
2 Factory equiped with sound , that don't stay programmed. Sent to MTH for repairs, going on 3 months now, still waiting.
2 DCC ready that smoke decoders within minutes. Still waiting for replacement motors since last February. MTH is ignoring my emails.
Jack W.
jalajoie My worst ones 4 MTH SD70ACe that were purchased last January. 2 Factory equiped with sound , that don't stay programmed. Sent to MTH for repairs, going on 3 months now, still waiting. 2 DCC ready that smoke decoders within minutes. Still waiting for replacement motors since last February. MTH is ignoring my emails.
Surely you are kidding right? Nothing built by MTH could ever be defective - just ask Mike Wolf.
No kidding Sheldon to be exact however I must say that 5 of these SD70 from MTH where purchased between me and a friend. One of them a SD70 M-2 is running very well. The others 4 no.
Worst locomotive that I ever owned was a Bachman 2-6-0. It would not run worth a hill of beans. I had some "electrical wizards" try their hand, but never got it to run reliably.
Craig North Carolina
jalajoie,is 110 percent right,I have one sound MTH SD and two no sound and they are ok,Now i have four others that has bad motors and MTH last year fixed one and had it over a month and when i got it back the other one went bad so i told them to send the motor that i did not want my loco gone for that long that i will fix it myself,when that motor came in it too was bad,that is when i lost contact with MTH,The other two i got at a train show was bad also.
Russell
Of the 'modern' high end stuff, the only thing I've truly had a probkem with was my AThearn RS3. Even soldering wires directly to the truck plates for power transfer did not solve the lack os power pickup, I ended up getting another one in a different road name cheap on eBay, and outof the box with absolutely no tinkering it ran great, so I swapped the shells. Someday I'll fix the other one and sell it off, I have no interest in the road name, I just got it to get a new power chassis. I won't sell it unless I know it's runnign properly, and I have enough other undecorated ones to paint that it's not worth stripping and repainting this one.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
farrellaa It has to be the Tyco 2-8-0 Chattanooga with the motor and drivve wheels in the tender. I finally sold it on Ebay. I don' t know what is soooo good about these but they sell like hot cakes on Ebay. -Bob
It has to be the Tyco 2-8-0 Chattanooga with the motor and drivve wheels in the tender. I finally sold it on Ebay. I don' t know what is soooo good about these but they sell like hot cakes on Ebay.
-Bob
I'll second that. I had an Tyco 0-8-0 with the tender drive when I was a kid. Even at my young age I knew it was junk. That thing never ran worth a darn. It had a smoke unit in the boiler that had an air pump powered by a cam lobe on one of the driver axles. The drive mechanism in the tender had traction tires on the wheels that would ball up and cause problems. Between the resistance of the air pump and the balled up traction tires, it would wobble, buck and lurch down the rails. Truly a piece of engineering excellence.
Coming in second and third place, of your choice, would be anything from Life Like or Model Power from back in the 70's.
rrinker Of the 'modern' high end stuff, the only thing I've truly had a probkem with was my AThearn RS3. Even soldering wires directly to the truck plates for power transfer did not solve the lack os power pickup, I ended up getting another one in a different road name cheap on eBay, and outof the box with absolutely no tinkering it ran great, so I swapped the shells. Someday I'll fix the other one and sell it off, I have no interest in the road name, I just got it to get a new power chassis. I won't sell it unless I know it's runnign properly, and I have enough other undecorated ones to paint that it's not worth stripping and repainting this one. --Randy
And yet my Athearn RS3's run just fine? - it truely is amazing.
Well, mine are 50/50. One still doesn't run despite lots of modification, the other was perfect out of the box.
And the 3 different Broadway locos I had experience with all were just fine right out of the box, they just ran.
Marx 0-4-0 tank engine in HO and/or Lima GP30 in N. To be fair, most N scale of that generation were poor runners.
Does anyone else remember Marx?
LensCapOn Marx 0-4-0 tank engine in HO and/or Lima GP30 in N. To be fair, most N scale of that generation were poor runners. Does anyone else remember Marx?
Yes i remember Marx.
In the 70's, I owned a Life-Like GP18, an AHM GP18, and the Tyco Chattanooga choo choo, which I believe was a 2-8-0. Then I bought an Athearn BB Super Geared F7. It ran like a switch watch compared to the other three, and at about age 12, I determined the other stuff was junk and never ran them or bought anything like them again.
In the modern era, I have had bad luck with some relentlessly screeching motors in P2K GP38-2's.
- Douglas
Tyco GP9, circa 1972. Ran for a couple weeks then Zip. Minitrix 060 in N that was a great paperweight but a lousy lousy engine, never ran well and eventually shorted out and stopped cold completely.
Have fun with your trains
csxns LensCapOn: Marx 0-4-0 tank engine in HO and/or Lima GP30 in N. To be fair, most N scale of that generation were poor runners. Does anyone else remember Marx? Yes i remember Marx.
LensCapOn: Marx 0-4-0 tank engine in HO and/or Lima GP30 in N. To be fair, most N scale of that generation were poor runners. Does anyone else remember Marx?
Karl or Groucho? I have 40- 60 year old Marx trains that run as good as the day they were made but yeah I was never to impressed with thier HO stuff.
I had a brass GE 44Tonner (can't remember mfg.) that would run about a foot and a half, then launch itself into the air and land at a right angle across the track. I tried everything and never could even find out why it did it. Traded in on a PFM Shay. Night and day.
Mike
I was surprised to see that no one, unless I missed the post, mentioned Hallmark brass. By far the worst built, worst running junk foisted off on the model railroad community. Every engine took about 100 hours of reconstruction before you could even think about putting them on the track.
The list of faults is so long that all of you who ever owned one...just nod in accordance.
Gotta be the two Athearn Genesis 4-6-2s and 2-8-2s that I paid Can$1000 for when they were first released. Yes, Can$250 each when first introduced!
Split gears and Athearn didn't honour their warranty, using the excuse that they were out of production and they couldn't have parts made. The engines also tracked poorly and one of them was Model Railroader's "Model of the Year". Guess it pays to be a major advertiser?
All four engines now run well but ONLY because I had to repair them myself.
Cheers
Roger T.
Home of the late Great Eastern Railway see: - http://www.greateasternrailway.com
For more photos of the late GER see: - http://s94.photobucket.com/albums/l99/rogertra/Great_Eastern/
Even weathering the ---------- ----------- ---------- thing did not help!!!
Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry
I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...
http://modeltrainswithmusic.blogspot.ca/
Matt FlorackI can DEFINITELY pinpoint some of my worst, as follows (all HO scale)--
Pretty much anything from Tyco. They were made for running around Christmas trees, with no thought given for slow speed operation. They were pretty much the slot cars of the model railroad world.
Marlon
See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR
jalajoie No kidding Sheldon to be exact however I must say that 5 of these SD70 from MTH where purchased between me and a friend. One of them a SD70 M-2 is running very well. The others 4 no.
Is he STILL your friend??
Honestly, it's a P2K SW8. Strike one is a did a lousy job striping, and one of the paint shades is too dark, but that's my fault.
The real killer, is it runs like a brick. The thing doesn't get power (cleaning issue? I tried that though) It's a Limited Edition engine without the quickplug, the only one I've ever seen post-brown box Life Likes that is liek that, and the cast weight is gonna be a pain in the tocus to get a DCC chip into it. The engine is supposed to be a staple of my little railroad's roster, but it's gonna become a shop queen right quick.
-Morgan
Gotta be my Balboa GS-4, been a dog as long as I can remember, likes to throw the valve gear, despite repeated repairs, the interior recesses create all sorts of oppertunties for shorts, despite carefull attention to routing and proper insulation of wiring. Somewhere along its life someone expanded on the factory DAYLIGHT paint and made a huge mess of the lower headlight housing by packing it with 5-minute Epoxy which also contrived to to coat the lower smokebox area and pilot as well.
Guess I should suck it up and fully restore it someday, or not!
Dave
There's never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.....
FlyingCrow I was surprised to see that no one, unless I missed the post, mentioned Hallmark brass. By far the worst built, worst running junk foisted off on the model railroad community. Every engine took about 100 hours of reconstruction before you could even think about putting them on the track. The list of faults is so long that all of you who ever owned one...just nod in accordance.
Not so much Hallmark Brass, but any brass that was made by Dong Jin for Hallmark, Custom Brass and others. The gear boxes were all junk and some had Tyco motors in them, the list of complaints is long and too diverse to post here. I did replace most gearboxes with Westside Gearboxes which then included requartering all the drivers.
Also KMT diesels also had their faults with the jerky drive train, motors, trucks, split gears, and gearing in general. They made diesels for Balboa, Westside, Alco and Hallmark. My Alco T-6 is the worst offender in this class, and I am going to repower it with an Atlas Chassis.
I did not own one but saw one, was an Alco Models import of the NYC K3q class Pacific. They would absolutely not run, the frame was like wet spaghetti and that caused all kinds of problems that no one could fix.
Rick
Rule 1: This is my railroad.
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Hmmm, it would be a tie between a N scale Bachmann 4-4-0 American and a Bachmann switcher, both left to me by my dad. Having been stored in basements, and closets for nearly twenty years most likely didn't help matters, but I took them both apart - cleaned and lubricated them to make sure I could get rid of any rust bunnies inside, reassembled them and test ran them. The 4-4-0 ran for a little while, sounding like a coffee grinder the entire time before going from 'It's alive! It's alive' to "It's on FIRE, it's setting my */@! on fire!". Can't find the source of the friction or anything to generate that level of heat in it either. The switcher runs, sounding like a coffee grinder, until it throws a drive gear and stops cold. Sometimes, it throws the gear so spectacularly that it dislodges the wheelset and throws the switcher from the track. No amount of tinkering has made either one run any better - and both are candidates for the 'Bachmann Stomp'