New Years Eve I was in the train room playing with my toys and decided to see if my first loco would still run. I got it out of storage and simply cleaned the wheels using the paper towel on a section of track method, and put it on the rails with about 17 cars in tow and it ran as good as it did when it was new!
Now this loco was the first loco I ever bought and it has ran and ran and ran, I was doing some thinking about it last night and, you may call me a lier, but I figure it has around 400 hundred hours of running time on it,and has been in storage for around a year, it has never been cleaned or lubed. It is running now and will hold it’s own up aginst my P2K diesels and will run away from my 2 new Bachmanns.
I was running it last night at around 40% throttle pulling 12 cars using 6.5 volts and .25 amps, the other locos will not hardly start to move at that low of throttle.
I just thought I would share this little bit of good news with you all here. I know that a lot of you do not like Bachmann locos, but this one, outside of the detailing is a little poor, runs as quiet as the P2Ks I have, and a lot quieter than the 2 new Bachmanns. Maybe this one was built on a Wednesday. LOL
Is that one of the old single power truck models? I’ve got a couple that are at least 25 years old and still run OK. (pretty fast and loud though) It’s a little odd that your amperage is that low. Mine draw closer to 1 amp.
I have a couple old Bachmann diesels. One is an 8-wheel-drive F9A, and the other is a 4-wheel-drive U36B. The U36 must be from the earliest run of single truck power, because the gears are a durable black plastic, the motor’s fairly powerful, and it has large square brushes instead of the little round ones used later. It’s still running great, with low current draw and good pulling power.[:D] The F9 has needed a lot of tweaking to run right, and it’s pretty noisy, but it’s still a good runner over-all.[:D]
This loco is only about 2 years old. I just got into Model RRing a coulpe of years ago. It does have all wheel drive and all wheel pick-up.
I did remove the shell and put a little lube on it this afternoon and will see how it does, the gears looked awful dry, it does have a ‘‘hum’’ to it at low speeds. Mike
From your story, I got the impression that your first loco was old. I guess that explains why it runs different from Loathar’s. I have an old Tyco that was my first engine. I remember having to push it around the track just to get it started. Then you had to run it at full speed for ten minutes, sparks and all! I still have that thing. I never did put it on the tracks to see if it ran. I figured if it ran like garbage twenty some years ago, it may blow up now!
I consider two-year old engines to be my “new stuff”!! [:)] When I switched to HO c.1987 my second loco purchase was a GN Spectrum GP-30, still runs well but a bit noisy at higher speeds.
Bachmann 20+ years ago only made pretty much toy-train quality stuff, although a few of their steam engines looked pretty good but didn’t run so well. After they introduced the Spectrum line things got better, the later “Bachmann Plus” and some of their most recent DCC-on-board stuff are pretty good.