This review is on Bachmann's 4-8-4 Niagara steam engine. I believe it started out with a pancake motor drive in the 80's. They upgraded it to their now long gone Plus series with better paint, a better drive and better wheels. It still uses the Plus series drive but with an upgraded motor. Bachmann now sells it in their Standard line. It comes in New York Central with a choice of two different road numbers: 5016 and 6005. The Bachmann Niagara has a very smooth paint job with very sharp color seperation. It comes with seperate smoke deflectors that have to be installed by the modeler. I had to file a groove on the inside of the left deflector so it could fit around one of the engine's steam pipes on the smokebox. It also comes with a cab interior that has every detail but the crew and seats. Most of the engine's detail is cast on, but some of the larger details are seperate parts. The handrails and coupler lift bar are blackened wire and look as good as railings on very high quality engines. The headlight can't be seen very easily going through the lenses but it is very visable through the smokestack. This can be fixed with a little electrical tape. All the wheels are blackened and have RP-25 flanges. The insides of the wheels are painted black, but Bachmann doesn't paint the proper white rims on the wheels. I painted the white rims on all but the drive wheels. The engine comes with a working smoke unit and comes with smoke fluid. It's neat to watch it smoke like a real steam engine, but it will only smoke for a couple minutes before needing a refill, if you put in the recommended 2-3 drops. The smoke unit is actually big enough to hold about 8-10 drops of smoke fluid. The tender has the large front and back grab irons and a pipe going all the way across the right side. The coal load is casted better than alot of coal loads on other manufacturer's steam engines. There is a port in the bottom of the tender for a sound speaker, but the engine isn't sound or DCC ready. The tender's wheels move side-to-side enough to easily make it around 18" curves. The New York Central logo on the side isn't done as well as the paint on the rest of the engine. The Niagara test ran well. It ran a little wobbly at lower speeds but was smoother at high speeds. It runs very quietly with the only noticable noise coming from the total of 30 wheels going around the track. The valve-gear operates smoothly and there are no binds in the mechanism. The motor came silver, but I painted it black because I could see it through the bottom of the shell. The minimum speed I could keep it running at was around 15 scale MPH. It reached a maximum speed of around 120-130 scale MPH. At 12 volts it drew 0.33 amps of current. The stall current was from 1.20 to 1.35 amps, depending on where the motor was. It's drawbar pull is strong enough to pull maybe 25-35 cars, which doesn't seem like much considering it weighs 1 pound. The worm is large enough to produce the effect of a small flywheel. The engine made it around 18" curves fairly easily. The front truck on the engine didn't have a strong enough spring to hold it down, so I replaced it. The tender rolls O.K., but it's not as good as most freight cars. The Bachmann 4-8-4 Niagara is overall a good engine that's only a couple steps below the Spectrum steamers. It's also reasonably priced for anyone.
_________________________________________________________________
Scott - Dispatcher, Norfolk Southern