i recently purchased a rivarossi emd e8 aba combo from ebay for approx $125.00. mint condition looking. estate sale they said. at least they didnt start out saying ‘i’m no expert but’. i was somewhat skeptical but bought them just the same after several emails and many questions. i cleaned and lubed them before putting them on the track. they look brand new. they run, pull and look great and i love the emd e8 looks.
my question is; what is supposed to be so great about them that everytime i see this brand for sale the heading almost always says ‘RARE’ or ‘one of a kind’. are they that good and i’ve got something that ought to run trouble free for some time or is it just a lot of hype to get sucker peoples attention?
any and all advice, good, bad, otherwise is welcomed. i just want to know more about what i bought. couldnt find much info about them using the internet search engines.
From what I understand the E8’s are just so so and no where close to even the Proto 2000 E’s out there. The Steam Engines are fairly nice and some have had reliability problems. The passenger cars are way under weight and only ok by todays standards. I’ve seen the Rivarossi E’s for around $39 US. For about the same price that you paid you could have bought a Proto 2000 E8 A/B set which is much better from just about any online dealer. Trainland has several at good prices. You may need to hunt for SP. Every once in a while I will see Proto 2000 SP Daylight E’s for around $50 on EBay. There are others that look nice from BLI. A few years ago before everyone and their brother started making passenger cars they were considered the best in plastic and brought a lot of money. Then Rivarossi had some financial problems and unloaded.
the two a units and the b unit are powered. if that makes a difference in the value of them. they perform well and i like the looks of the e8’s. takes me back several years when my father would always make sure he took me to chaney yard and ingle wood yard in houston tx where he worked as a switchman and later as a retarder tower operator. loved the smell of the diesel and the rumble of them especially when they would power up the engines. not sure if the person selling them knew they were powered. he said the b and second a unit were dummies. maybe he thought they looked stupid. ha! all three together make up for a long pulling power plant for my passenger cars. looks impressive.
I saw several Rivarossi E units for about $25-30 some years ago. In fact, I was tempted to get them all, and Ebay what I didn’t wanted. Too bad they were all gone the next time I was in that shop. Is it still sometimes difficult to get parts for them? I’d like to do up a Penn Central E
They are not the best runners but they had good finishes. My first one was a Wabash. I stripped it and removed the dynamic brake. Added details and painted it in the B&O blue,gray and black. Latter replaced the wheels with North West Short Line RP-25 wheels. I ran this on and off for about twenty years. Here about a month ago she puked her motor. I might replace the whole drive with a Hobbytown multi-drive. Have fun with your E’s.
