Beware: Not sure if this is the right spot but from my point of view Bachmann On30 does not look good. Bought a new Cliamax about a mont ago. When I got around to it tried to run it. It would run backwards great would only run about an inch or two forward before it would stop.
Sent it back to Bachmann, I have had good luck with their warranty work in the past and had quick turn around. Well after a little more than 6 weeks I get a call from Bachmann. Apparantly they are unable to repair or do not have parts they were not clear on that point.
In any case they did not have any to send out a replacement either. Ended up having to accept a On30 ( I hope) Porter 0-4-2T as a replacement engine.
By the way no Shays either. So they are batting “O” on the On30 . Guess I shoudl have paid more attention to the posting about teh Bachmann On30 locomotives.
Hmm, and I was looking forward to {someday} building an under the tree layout with On30 trains to run!
Bachmann in HO has been good to me so far with 14 locos, no issues, no returns or repairs. I am surprised of problems With On30.
What you experienced can and does happen with any manufacturer, not just Bachmann, even the expensive brands of Locos.
Since Bachmann is the only supplier of On30 {that I know of}, you may be “Stuck” until they make more.
Some retailers or etailers may still have some left on the shelves. wholesaletrains.com lists the climax and shays as “available” perhaps they are not. Not sure who else carries On30. My other favorite suppliers of all things train MB Klien { modeltrainstuff.com } doesn’t seem to.
At least Bachamnn offers a substitution, and not just a blatant “we cannot fix or repair” and you are left “out of luck”.
Good running geared steam model locomotives are surprisingly difficult for the plastic and die cast model manufacturers to make. Nobody I know of has succeeded on the 1st run. MDC, Rivarossi (AHM), and Bachmann have all tried. All their 1st runs (and often subsequent, too) have had issues.
In Bachmann’s case, the issues applied to both the Shay and Climax in both On30 and HO. For the Shay, the tiny plastic gears on the line shafts that drive the wheels were not up to the load. Kind of like using too soft a material for the worm in a conventional steam model drive. The Climax had a complex drive with too many parts being too flexible.
NWSL came out with a set of steel gears for the Shay. Fixing the Climax has not been as easy.
The second runs by Bachmann do have improved drives.
FWIW, the early Bachmann On30 Porter runs also had some problems (I don’t recall what they were). These too have been improved in later runs. Bachmann does continually improve their products.
Bachmann isn’t the only manufacturer of On30 products (check out Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette magazine) but they’re the only one that mass produces On30 products and sells them at a reasonable price. Unfortunately, as with other manufacturers who have their work done in China, it can take a long time to straighten out any problems with their products.
It sounds like what you are all saying is “stay away from their geared steam”. And I would suggest, as someone previously posted, it has everything to do with reproducing the complicated mechanisms in plastic, as versus metal.
In Bachman’s defense, I have to say that I have a couple of their side-rod On30 locomotives that I have found to be absolutely bomb-proof.