"Pig In a Pokes" - Your *worst* Model RR purchases ....

[HOScaleModelRailroader]

The things you wish you could go back in time and just put back on the shelf and walk away.

I guess my worst purchases came from Train Shows. Specifically, buying used power at train shows and LHS. Inevitably, most of the stuff is there for a reason ... it was a headache to someone else who wants to make it your headache (for a price). Never believe the "Yeah - it ran fine on the test track" line. When they do run it for you on their test track - pay attention to how high they have the throttle up to make it move.

My worst purchases:

A Southern Pacific SD45T-2. All beauty, very bad motor, seller's phone disconnected. :^( Now it sits on a rip track (as a lit dummy unit).

Walther's Cornerstone Golden Valley Depot - went through 5 of these at my LHS. Hello Walthers Quality Control - dripping globs of glue all over your builtups isn't considered "weathering" and where did the "rear walls" go to? (Yes, they were made using only 3 walls - they forget to glue on the rear wall ...)

Addendum:
I'm also including Walther's Trainline Alco FA-1s (Item Number 931-203) - most Trainline units I have run fine, quiet, and smooth. But these Alcos - total Walthers POS. I've got $15 LifeLike (pre-Walthers takeover) engines that run better.

[wgnrr]

Anything Bachmann...

Phil

[dragenrider]

My worst purchase was off of eBay. I bought a nice looking group of Athearn SW switchers. No wonder the pictures were fuzzy! The shells were full of holes, had old rusted motors, missing parts and broken steps. The rest of the lot was OK, though.

I can't blame the seller because he clearly stated he knew nothing about them and that they came from an estate.

I agree with the train show problem. I always test run before buying and inspect critically. I'll even take the car or engine apart if the seller will allow it!

[Fergmiester]

Well let's see...

About twelve years ago I went to a show to do a dispay as a member of the local Model Boat Builders Guild. It had been over 20 years since I had my trains out and I walked around and bought these 10 Athearn boxcars. I've never built a boat since[:D]

I've been taken a couple of times but as I am now more than aware before I buy it I will have it test run, I will check it out of the box and go over it with I fine tooth comb!

Buyer beware!

Fergie

[zgardner18]

So far it's been my first two Union Pacific engines that I bought. (Maybe UP has something to do with it? J/K)

Bachmann Specium Dash 8-40CW
Athearn RTR AC4400CW

Bachmann--engine good, body very bad
Athean--engine bad, body good

I'm thinking of a way to combine them into one good engine. Ah, maybe not.

[selector]

Roundhouse Harriman cars and whoever made them crappy red ore cars with the press-on trucks.

[railroadyoshi]

My poor purchases have been in the way of price. I paid $135 (MSRP...OUCH!) for a p2k GP-38 2 a year or two back, just got another for $65.

[wjstix]

I bought a couple of Williams O 3-rail engines in the mid eighties, a brass-bodied 4-6-2 and an undec Trainmaster. The Trainmaster ran OK but tended to derail on Gargraves turnouts and track (which was kinda odd as it made to go around much sharper curves than I used) and the 4-6-2 was a mess. It had rubber traction tires which came off all the time, causing it not track very well, and as I recall it had several other problems. At that time Williams was relatively new and didn't have it's own repair dept., they had some guy in Maryland that you had to work with out of his home. I sent in back and they ret'd it saying it was fine.

All things considered they were incredibly expensive - I think the steam engine was about $240 and the Trainmaster maybe $100. This in c.1986 when I was making $5 an hour !! I ended up putting them away in the attic, and switched to HO scale in 1987 largely because of losing that much of my small RR budget to these two lemons.

[rolleiman]

Aside from the one in the thread where I've done my own griping, I've been pretty lucky at LHS, Shows, and Ebay. I'd have to say my most Disappointing purchase had to be the E&R Sharknose several years back. All around POS. Still sits in it's box awaiting it's fate, whatever I decide that to be.

[METRO]

People have probably heard me gripe about my Bachman Spectrum Dash-8s before, but if I could do it all over again, I'd just have done without them.

That's the weird thing though, eventually I ended up taking it as a personal mission to MAKE these Dash-8s work well and look right.

I ended up spending close to a hundred dollars on one of them repowering, regearing, detailing and painting. But you know what? Now it's one of my best engines.

HA! I WIN!!

Cheers!
~METRO

[Berk-fan284]

An Akane USRA 2-6-6-2 brass locomotive-fuzzy pictures,scortched open frame motor (that I got running after two hours of fiddling with it and three hours of swearing at my own stupidity for buying it) unique multi piece cab (it looked like it was in a real derailment), I fixed everything up(one of the best running open frame motored locomotives I own) but it was a real "crash" course in ebay brass. I still hit ebay for older brass locos (I obviously didn't learn my lesson that well) and get them in varying condition- good,bad & ugly.

[Anonymous]

Atlas snap switches.

Code 100 track.

Lifelike green grass rolls

Bachmann Silver Kits

Woodland Scenics scenery glue and scatter material/dead fall

That's the kind of stuff we should be talking about?

[SpaceMouse]

I'd have not bought EZ track

I'd still have the factory Lenz decoder in my Atlas GP-38 instead of two decoders and poor performance.

I'd stay away from "Lots" on eBay. (Anyone want a bunch of old Tyco and Bachman cars without trucks?)

[Anonymous]

My poor purchases was definitely the Woodland scenics foam roadbed. Its too loud when trains go over the foambed sections. Me not like!!

[fiatfan]

QUOTE: Originally posted by zgardner18


Bachmann Spectrum Dash 8-40CW

[#ditto]

Tom

[trainboyH16-44]

January 2003, an Athearn AC4400CW in CP. Thought it would be neat to have another big AC on the layout. (I had a Kato SD90/43MAC at the time) It was an average athearn in terms of motor sound and speed, but it couldn't do a mile without derailing at least 5 times. 5 times. When an even longer loco doesn't even derail once, and the Athearn, which doesn't even run as well derails more, you know that I'm not gonna keep it....

[Anonymous]

I got lucky at the LHS in Wichita, KS on some Athern units, like ones below. Bought I bought an F-7 and SW1500 ATSF. They ran like I run (slow and draging).

[GAPPLEG]

Athearn rubber band drive gp-9's I bought in the early 70's. Why ?[banghead]

[tomikawaTT]

My worst model railroad purchase was made over thirty years ago. I wanted to build a unit train of 50-foot AAR hoppers to run on a club layout, so I ordered undecorated kits (Athearn blue box) from a now-defunct mail-order discount house.

When they arrived, they were all wood-side composite hoppers that would have been rebuilt with steel sides or scrapped years before my target date!

Chuck

[brazos87]

Just had to have coil cars--and Walthers made them. Bought about 15 before Red Caboose announced theirs. Now I can't give away the Walthers cars. N scale BTW.[:(]

[Anonymous]

-Life-Like turnouts. They're $8 for a remote control one. I thought I might as welll save $4 over the Atlas. Well, these LL turnouts cause so many derailmeants it's not even funny.

-Athearn RTR AC4400 ran good, nice detail, it had the BNSF new logo, then the motor started grinding and now I model 1968 so I no longer need it. If only I saved my $65 for the Atlas S1 (but I didnt model CGW until a few months ago)

[grayfox1119]

Quality is like buying oats my grandfather used to say, " if you want nice fresh oats, you have to expect to pay a fair price, but if you don't mind buying oats that have already been through the horse......wellllllll, that comes a little cheaper, aayup ".

[Anonymous]

Bachmann GS-4 4-8-4 in Chessie Colors. 50 dollars at a Kaybee toy store in the mid 80's

It lasted maybe 1 hour on the loop of track before it went into the trash. Oh yea I kept it in the box 10 years but it did go into the trash can.

And you wonder why I did not buy any steam again until Broadway Limited came along.

[Milwhiawatha]

First Bad experience was at a local Train Show I picked up a Gp35 I believe cheap Bachmann in ATSF got it home ran it and frieds out. Today I still have it just waiting for me to make a train scrap yard.

After that I really havent gotten any bad deals.
As for people slamming Woodland scenics problems I never had an issue with their Scenrey Glue or the Foamroadbed. If you used other than foam tack glue or even Tacky glue of any sort that maybe why its loud.

[Texas Zepher]

That's easy - Three very expensive Athearn Genesis SD70s.

[R. T. POTEET]

I don't really have any Model RR purchase nightmares (unlike automobiles and I could rant for an hour on that subject) but I have made some purchases which I regretted.

Athearn's announcement of FMs "Trainmaster" set my salivary glands afire and the first thing I did was run off to my LHS and special order two lettered for the Undec railroad. I had this wild hare that these two units would become central to the operating theme of I my yet-to-be-determined house road. This all occurred just about the time I joined the local NTRAK club. I had these two Trainmasters for about 10 years; they never did get painted and weren't much more than broken-in when I finally took them (along with a couple of SD9s - same story) to a swap meet and got about half of what I had purchased them for. As I stated, I don't regard this as a "bad" purchase but it wasn't an intellignt one.

I've pretty well learned my lesson (I guess) in this regard; I do have a couple of very recent GM and GE diesels that are anachronistic to the theme of my pike and I'll wind up getting rid of them one of these days. I've got some Atlas SD60s which kind of set the time frame of my pike at the mid to late-80s. So why did I buy SD90s and C44-9ws? Who knows???

[twhite]

Okay--New Jersey Brass HO model of a Rio Grande M-75 4-8-2. Beautiful loco. Looked just great. Always wanted a Rio Grande Mountain. Put it on the track, warmed her up. Top speed of about 20SMPH. Could just about pull the tender. Drivers sprung with #12-guage GUITAR wire. 34" MINIMUM radius if you took the leading truck off. Little bitty weight, about 3oz. Teeny-tiny can motor, looked as if it might be to small for an N-scale 4-6-0. Got to work. Tore the thing apart (I was not going to let it conquer me at all). Can't do anything about the guitar-wire springs except get a heavier gauge. Re-springing it was a Korean crossword puzzle (pardon the non-PC pun, here). Remotored it with a can motor from NWSL I could at least SEE! Re-balanced and re-weighted it. Worked on the lead truck. Popped one of the coil springs on the tender trucks (how come the TENDER was better balanced than the LOCO?). Fixed that. Got it all ready after about two months of tinkering. Ran beautifully for about 3 feet. Back drivers became un-sprung. Fixed that. Ran beautifully for 3 more feet. Back drivers became un-sprung AGAIN! Finally CA'd the wire springs to the back of the frame. Ran beautifully, actually hauled a TRAIN from all the tinkering. Thought about it. I finally had my Mountain--but at what a price of tinkering!!
Ran into another one the very next year for the price of a song at a swap-meet. You'd think I'd have learned, right? WRONG.
I've now got three of the darned things. If nothing else, they've taught me PATIENCE!! However, the other two came to me pre-tinkered and run quite nicely, thank you. Maybe that's why I got them so cheap--the previous owners were as exhausted as I was, LOL!
In my next life, I'm modeling a railroad whose steam locomotives will be mass-produced in plastic. I SWEAR!!
Tom
[:I][:I][B)]

[rolleiman]

QUOTE: In my next life, I'm modeling a railroad whose steam locomotives will be mass-produced in plastic. I SWEAR!!

Suuuuuuuuuure you are!! [:)] Isn't that always the way with brass?? Looks great, doesn't run worth a [censored]. Worse part is, no two are alike..

[aloco]

Buying all those Yugoslavian made Model Power locos in Canadian road names back in the early 1980s.

[Anonymous]

Probably a Bachmann On30 0-4-2 Porter. Pretty much every other Bachmann loco has been ok, apart from quartering and gauge problems on steamers. This thing seems to have a gear problem that makes it jump vertically once every wheel rotation. I've had it apart a few times and failed utterly to figure out the problem, so it sits boxed on a shelf. I had every intention of fitting one of the Backwoods Miniatures detailing kits but it's not worth spending more on a loco that doesn't run properly. Worst £30 I ever spent...