I only have a few LL engines, and they’re both N scale–an SW-something, and an E7A. They run pretty well, but aren’t on the same level as my Kato and Atlas engines. LL drives, IMHO, don’t seem as smooth. In HO scale, I don’t have any LL stuff. After my first foray into the wonderful world of Athearn, I turned my back on the “train set” market. Well that, and I got tired of replacing various parts on my Bachmann F units. Ended up retiring both of them.Oddly enough, the freebie F’s I have now, were fitted with Tyco RF16 shells, yet still run great. What’s up with that?
I started with Life Less, I mean like and it was a start. Mine did not last very long. I still have around 10 of them, some of them may still even run. I was thinking about them today, might be time to make some dummies out of them.
Far as the Life Like and cheap Tyco and Bachmann rolling stock? I learned a lot from them! Taught me how to make junk track and roll like the good stuff! I have 55 or so that still get used and around 15 more to be worked.
Cuda Ken
Yes they are noisy
I have none of the old Lifelike stuff running, either locomotives or cars. I have some heavily kitbashed work car equipment that may have some Lifelike components, but nothing stock.
Their Proto 2000 series is different. My entire active roster is P2K (before Walthers bought them), with a GP7, two GP18s, and a GP30 as stand-in power until I get my last GP18.
MR.SP.Wrote:Same for Bachmann their line was also considered as junk.
At one time I would have agreed with that assessment.
However…
I seen some Bachman Spectrum locomotives run for hours at the club.
So,now I’m not so cotten pickin’ sure if’n they are as bad as many says.
Back to Life Like…Indeed LL was considered inferior until they release their P2K line of locomotives and cars…Everybody and I mean everybody sung praises to LL for such detailed locomotives…
Hi, I am looking for replacement springs used to joionn the motor to the truck on Life-Like n scale. GP18 and others. Do you have 1 or more for sale? [email address removed by moderator. Please contact via PM.]
I’m still running my Erie A/B units and still lovin’ them…
Among the many cheap, glossy plastic freight cars Life-Like made, every once in a while you would find one in flat colors that looked OK alongside Athearns and Mantuas.
The engines I had only ran fast. If I tried to run them slowly they would jerk and sputter.
I’d check with Walthers. They own all the Life-Like tooling now, so they might have what you need.
.
I fixed one, I believe it was my BL-2, with small silicon tubing intended for fuel line in R/C aircraft.
.
-Kevin
.
The only LifeLike locomotives I had were a pair of RS-11s, bought really cheap from Hobbies For Men. After placing them on the layout, and seeing them run…well, sorta run, sometimes, I set them aside in my workshop. I later got a couple of Atlas RS-11s, with predictably better results.
That prompted me to haul the LifeLike units out of storage, removing the truck-mounted motors. I then replaced the heavy cast-on handrails and added a few details and paint to match the Atlas units…
In the photo below, the first unit is a LifeLike dummy, followed by two Atlas units and the other Lifelike, out of the picture, following…
The locos were later sold as powered/dummy pairs, along with this Atlas S-4…
Wayne
I bought two LifeLike RS-11s from Hobbies For Men, and when they finally arrived, in Burlington Northern paint, I excitedly put them on the layout to see how they ran…or sorta, almost ran…kinda. Oh, well, lesson learned and at least at no great cost.
I later got a couple of Atlas RS-11s, with much better results, and that prompted me to get the LifeLike ones out of storage. I removed the truck-mounted motors and gears, along with the heavy-duty cast-in-place handrails, then body-mount some Kadees and closed-up the gaping pilots. After re-doing the handrails and adding a few details, I repainted them to match the Atlas units. Here’s one of them, “assisting” a Mikado…
In the photo below, a LifeLike dummy is leading two Atlas units, with the other dummy following, out-of-frame…
When I later backdated my layout’s era, I sold these units as dummy/powered pairs, along with this Atlas S-4, shown below…
Wayne
OK, so just who is Anonymous, and how do you get to over 300,000 post ???
Mike.
LOL
If that’s a serious question, knowing what I know about these things, I’d say his account is probably closed/deleted (this thread is about 14 years old…) and every such account probably gets lumped into one slot for tabulating posts. So 300k posts out there were made by people who are no longer active on this forum.
Just my (mildly educated) guess…