For me, it's tough since almost all of the locomotives I've owned all run well. (In fact, my only defective locomotive was a Trainline GP15 that came with bent handrails and no horn). But my father had a Model Power 0-4-0, It was pathetic and hideous. Got gutted to parts rather quickly
Probably the Tyco Geep that I chose out to buy when I was about 4, in the old Red Caboose or whatever it was on W. 43rd. No cab interior, windows a scale foot thick, growling pancake motors with the smell of burning, the usual cogging, hitching excuse for slow motion.
But a full set of what I then thought were exquisite separate metal handrails... so exquisite I never installed them to be damaged or lost. I still have them in their printed glassine envelope somewhere in storage.
Loved it. Still love it. I could re-engine it into some ideal restomod version, as others here have recently done with theirs, but it's a direct link to the past, like electrically-challenged nadeleines, whenever I look at it or put it on a track...
Probably my Revell NW2.
The motor sat on top of one of the trucks. Power was transmitted down to the drive shaft by a pair of spur gears, one on the motor shaft and one on the drive shaft.
The motor was held in place by the screw at the back of the motor, that clamped the magnet between the two pole pieces. The screw was extended enough for the purpose.
So. If you tightened that screw too much, it would rock the motor back, and disengage the spur gears. If you backed the screw off too far, the motor was loose.
There was a sweet spot where you'd get enough engagement to move the loco. But adding a train proved too much, and the loco would just sit there and buzz, with the teeth of the motor gear rubbing across the now obstinate lower spur gear.
A real Woofer, that one.
Oh, yeah. Had a cute little Rivarossi Dockside--even had valve gear. But it became known as a Duckside, for reasons that should be obvious.
Ed
Mid 70s Tyco diesels also. Long gone, good riddance LHS introduced me to Athearn... Dan
AHM and Tyco locos from my early days. Some of my walthers locos have had trouble too.
JJF
Prototypically modeling the Great Northern in Minnesota with just a hint of freelancing.
Yesterday is History.
Tomorrow is a Mystery.
But today is a Gift, that is why it is called the Present.
AHM's C424.
Don; Prez, CEO or whatever of the Wishram, Oregon and Western RR
Mine was a GSB rail limited SD40-2.
Russell
Mine would be an Athearn F7 with HiFi drive, my first HO loco I got in 1957. Still have it and it runsk sort of.
Ed, I have a Riv Dockside too, cost $7 in '59. Mine always ran well and still does right up to a scale 120 mph. The valve gear is a blur at that speed.
CN Charlie
Worst one ever was a Bachmann pancake motor steamer. Don't remember the type for sure, but I think it was a Mikado or a Northern or some such. Real pile of crap.
Mark P.
Website: http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.comVideos: https://www.youtube.com/user/mabrunton
I was going to say my N scale Bachmann 0-6-0, but then I saw HO in the title.
In HO, the only bad runners i have are my brass diesels, but I knew this when I bought them, so that can't count.
All my other HO locomotives have all been pretty good runners... I think... let me ponder about this a while and I will check in again.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
CNCharlie Mine would be an Athearn F7 with HiFi drive, my first HO loco I got in 1957. Still have it and it runsk sort of.
Might be time to replace the "drive belts". It was my first HO loco, too, but I got mine a year later. UP it was. Can't see how it could be the Worst, as it was as simple as a Frisbee. And as long as you were out on the mainline, pullin' that manifest, it was smooth as silk. Not so good switching, though.
Ed, I have a Riv Dockside too, cost $7 in '59. Mine always ran well and still does right up to a scale 120 mph. The valve gear is a blur at that speed. CN Charlie
It IS true that mine ran rather smoothly. Ya know, it had a ball bearing motor. But with the three-pole armature and the "high speed" gearing; it, too, wasn't so good for switching. Which is about all an 0-4-0T is good for.
I DO wonder how it would have run with a good decoder in it. Maybe that would have gotten it down to switching speeds.
My little guy finally got zinc pest in the cylinder castings, and had to be put down.
Mantua General 4-4-0, mine with the Cary Pittsburgh boiler & cab. The motor is in the too-small tender, and it overheats... which isn't a problem since it runs so poorly, I never use it.
But its on my (very long) list of locos to upgrade (re-motor/add decoder/add keep-alive, probably will need a bigger tender too).
Jim
I have thought about it. I must have bought at least one bad running HO scale locomotive, but for the life of me I cannot think of one.
My 2-6-6-4 had decoder issues.
My 2-8-0 broke, but not by the locomotive's fault.
Other than that, I think every HO scale SGRR locomotive is still in operable condition.
A NWSL/FED Cotton Belt 4-4-2. Tyco motor, frame slots wide enough the bearing rotated in them, lousy details, sloppy rods, poor soldering and soft springs. The box wasn't too bad though!
oldline1
Tyco Chattanooga Choo Choo and a coupler of AHM diesels, back before I knew better.
I don't have any worst...
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
I bought a pair of RS-11s from Hobbies For Men (mail order) for, I think $15.00 apiece.When they arrived, I found that the handrails were an integral part of the body casting, and about the same size (thickness) as the rails on which the locos would be running.The locos, from LifeLike (Proto-no-thousand) had one powered truck each, with the motor mounted atop it. To start them moving required a current similar to that used for an electric chair, and speed options were jackrabbit or dead tortoise.
I quickly decided to make them into dummies (related, apparently, to the guy who ordered them), replacing the handrails with Athearn stanchions and some piano wire. I also shaved-off the cast-on grabirons, replacing them with wire ones. By the time I had them done, they were actually better detailed than the two smooth-running Atlas RS-11s that they were slated to be operating with...
(Click on the photos for larger views)
...and one of the Atlas diesels...
When I backdated my layout to the late '30s, the powered/dummy loco pairs were sold-off to two different buyers.
I also had one of Bachmann's early Consolidations, the one with the pancake motor. I made some modifications to get rid of the Wooten-style firebox and was in the process of re-detailing it when Bachmann announced their Spectrum Consolidations.
Here's the older one with the pancake motor, but missing some details...
...it was, and still is, a fairly decent runner, although not as nice, nor as powerful as my modified Spectrum Consolidations....
The 26 survived a 3' face-meeting with the layout room's concrete floor, and the 49 had a similar appointment with the floor, but after a 5' drop. Both still run well, although the 49 is generally not on the layout, as I have five Spectrum Consolidations in-service, and another three awaiting modifications into models of three specific CNR prototypes.
Wayne
My worst HO loco ever was the AHM (Made in Yugoslavia) RS-2. When I put it on the track, it ran for about 3 feet and stopped. Behind the engine and between the rails were a number of plastic bits that had fallen out of the bottom of the gear boxes. The gears manged to destroyed themselves, falling to tiny pieces in the very first use. So not only was it as well detailed as the average Hostess Twinkie, it was like Calvin Coolidge - it chose not to run. What a hunk o' junk.
In the mid '70s, I bought a pair of Tyco ATSF F7s while on a trip to Pennsylvania. Man, they were grinders and I never could get any smoothness out of them. They were among my first Ebay sales many years ago.
That experience convinced me to stay with Athearn diesels in those early days.
ENJOY !
Mobilman44
Living in southeast Texas, formerly modeling the "postwar" Santa Fe and Illinois Central
OK, I have pondered on this subject for a while longer, and I am confident that I never owned a poorly running HO scale locomotive.
My Tenshodo 0-8-0 is noisy, but runs great.
I switched to HO after I had an entire fleet of Kato locomotives in N scale. I previously had owned tons of poor running locomotives in N scale, and I guess I learned all my lessons there.
After switching to HO I knew that only god runners were worth buying.
For at least a decade, I only had 4 HO scale locomotives, and they were all good ones.
Tyco 2-8-0, with the awful tender drive. My very first steamer. I think it started breaking down after 15 minutes. What a disapointment for a 10 year old kid.
But the biggest disapointment was the Bachmann Climax B, given the money I paid for it. One hour of running time and the gears broke. The NWSL kit is on the shelf...
The best all-around value: my Bachmann 2-6-0 (new tooling). A fantastic engine for the price...
Simon
snjroyTyco 2-8-0, with the awful tender drive.
OK, so I did buy a Tyco F unit, and it ran like garbage. But... I knew that going in. I bought it for nostalgia. That locomotive now has a Proto-Power-West chassis with a Sagami can motor. It runs great, and that was always the plan.
Unfortunately a series of worst engine when I was 11-15 years old. 2 Tyco C-430's with the drive on the front truck. Ran for a while but then the gears of the drive started to break and fall apart. Loved that Bicentenial paint scheme on one of them.
These were followed by a series of AHM diesels - S2, a pair of SW-1's with one powwered, a dummy and a matching caboose. The S2 and SW-1 had a single powered truck with traction tires and never ran or tracked well.
Scott Sonntag
I got many years of good use out of the Mantua C-430's (4 of them) and one of the Tyco crappy Power Torque C-430 units from 1978.
The worst loco I ever owned was the AHM/Rivarossi N&W Y-6B with the three pole motor. 1. the motor sucked 2. Plastic wheel centers? really? Why would any sane person design that? Eventually the wheel centers fail and turn freely on the axle. The only good solution, which is expensive, is replacing the entire axle. The store where I worked had all the parts, so that is what I did: rebuilt one entire Rivarossi Y-6B. Then the only question was: how long will it last till it fails again?
The worst running loco I ever had: Rivarossi Y-6B.
2nd place: Bachmann Spectrum Dash 8-40C
3rd place: AHM F units
Hello All,
Great Northern Fan 54"Worst HO Scale Locomotive you've ever owned or ran?".
"Ran" or "Rant"???
Hope this helps.
"Uhh...I didn’t know it was 'impossible' I just made it work...sorry"
Am I the only one to have (or admit to having) a pair of Marx F-3A units? Actually, they could have been F-2s, since they had three portholes molded into their sides. I made the mistake of trading a guy some model airplanes (non-flying) for these beasts. They were ugly, looked more like they were crying, instead of that EMD bulldog nose. Noisy? When these two took off with a train, conversation was no longer possible, possibly due to the exposed gearing on the truck(s)? Switching? You've got to be joking. Right? Trying to start a train of more that seven or eight cars on an 18 inch radius curve, always wound up with half of them laying on their sides, due to stringlining.
About 1960, I found Athearn's HiF (rubber band drive) GP-"9" (actually a GP-7), F-7, and RDC's. Not much improvement in operating characteristics but, a whole lot quieter. Then came a Lionel 4-6-2 with a gear drive. Much better all around performance, except for switching (with a 4-6-2?). Lionel, true to their tinplate roots, molded the die cast frame with a solid road pilot, making installation of an operating coupler, a major undertaking. I know, some roads used Pacifics in freight service, but not the one I was modeling. I wanted my airplanes back!!!
All of us here who started out with these hokey pieces of refuse managed to stay in the hobby by finding there were better locomotives to be had. How many people out there figured it was all junk and threw in the towell. I wouldn't have lasted much longer had I not been enlightened.
Besides Athearn's GP 35, Kadee couplers and Atlas nickel silver were pivotal to keeping me in the game, even though I've expanded beyond those products ('cept Kadee).
What a disservice to the hobby, and the industry the manufacturers of this sub par junk rendered in the long run, to sell a few, or even a lot of cheap disposable articles of landfill. That's hindsight, but knowing that wouldn't have changed anything.
It's still Phriday here, I can Filosofize! Dan
Lindberg NW2 with belt drive, crica 1963.
Tom
Life is simple - eat, drink, play with trains!
Go Big Red!
PA&ERR "If you think you are doing something stupid, you're probably right!"
An Athearn RDC with the rubber band drive.
An "expensive model collector"
Back in the late 70's, my wife bought me a Tyco Chatanooga Choo Choo 2-8-0, for Christmas. It was a poor runner at first and only got worse the more I ran it.
But it did get me started in the hobby.