This review is on Bachmann’s historic “The John Bull” HO scale train set.[:D]
Out of the three historic train sets Bachmann has made, this one’s the best.[:D] The engine, tender and cars are all very well detailed. Almost all the detail is seperate, with wire grab irons, seperate plastic piping, bell, handrails, and many other details. The engine’s boiler has wood detail molded in, and the tender also has wood-grain detail molded in. The engine has nicely detailed painting, with a light green boiler, brass trim (not real brass), black firebox and smokebox, and dark green footboards. The tender and cars are dark green and black, and the paint is very smooth. No colors run into eachother.[:D] The front pilot is a seperate assembly, being held on by the front drivers and a pin, and is also sprung to keep the pilot wheels from derailing.[:D] The headlight box is hollow and has a clear piece on the front, so a light bulb can be installed easily, if you’d ever want it to light up.[:D] The smokestack has nice pointed-edge detail on top, which looks good. The only thing missing from this set that’s in the other two is an engineer, but one could be easily added on. The tender has six seperate grab irons on it, and six other detail parts, including a large part on the roof that looks like the “dog houses” on more modern steam engines, two platforms, a large pipe and the sideframes. The sideframes are black and have very finely molded shock-absorber and brake details. The cars are well detailed, with finely molded end railings, braces and other details. They also have interiors, so passengers can be added very easily.[:D] The window “glass” is a large piece of transparent yellow plastic, which makes the interior barely visible. The trucks are seperate, and the sides are painted a semi-dark tan. All the wheels in the set have spokes molded into them, and the engine drive wheels and tender wheels are blackened metal.