The things you wish you could go back in time and just put back on the shelf and walk away.
I guess my worst purchases came from Train Shows. Specifically, buying used power at train shows and LHS. Inevitably, most of the stuff is there for a reason … it was a headache to someone else who wants to make it your headache (for a price). Never believe the “Yeah - it ran fine on the test track” line. When they do run it for you on their test track - pay attention to how high they have the throttle up to make it move.
My worst purchases:
A Southern Pacific SD45T-2. All beauty, very bad motor, seller’s phone disconnected. :^( Now it sits on a rip track (as a lit dummy unit).
Walther’s Cornerstone Golden Valley Depot - went through 5 of these at my LHS. Hello Walthers Quality Control - dripping globs of glue all over your builtups isn’t considered “weathering” and where did the “rear walls” go to? (Yes, they were made using only 3 walls - they forget to glue on the rear wall …)
Addendum:
I’m also including Walther’s Trainline Alco FA-1s (Item Number 931-203) - most Trainline units I have run fine, quiet, and smooth. But these Alcos - total Walthers POS. I’ve got $15 LifeLike (pre-Walthers takeover) engines that run better.
My worst purchase was off of eBay. I bought a nice looking group of Athearn SW switchers. No wonder the pictures were fuzzy! The shells were full of holes, had old rusted motors, missing parts and broken steps. The rest of the lot was OK, though.
I can’t blame the seller because he clearly stated he knew nothing about them and that they came from an estate.
I agree with the train show problem. I always test run before buying and inspect critically. I’ll even take the car or engine apart if the seller will allow it!
About twelve years ago I went to a show to do a dispay as a member of the local Model Boat Builders Guild. It had been over 20 years since I had my trains out and I walked around and bought these 10 Athearn boxcars. I’ve never built a boat since[:D]
I’ve been taken a couple of times but as I am now more than aware before I buy it I will have it test run, I will check it out of the box and go over it with I fine tooth comb!
I bought a couple of Williams O 3-rail engines in the mid eighties, a brass-bodied 4-6-2 and an undec Trainmaster. The Trainmaster ran OK but tended to derail on Gargraves turnouts and track (which was kinda odd as it made to go around much sharper curves than I used) and the 4-6-2 was a mess. It had rubber traction tires which came off all the time, causing it not track very well, and as I recall it had several other problems. At that time Williams was relatively new and didn’t have it’s own repair dept., they had some guy in Maryland that you had to work with out of his home. I sent in back and they ret’d it saying it was fine.
All things considered they were incredibly expensive - I think the steam engine was about $240 and the Trainmaster maybe $100. This in c.1986 when I was making $5 an hour !! I ended up putting them away in the attic, and switched to HO scale in 1987 largely because of losing that much of my small RR budget to these two lemons.
Aside from the one in the thread where I’ve done my own griping, I’ve been pretty lucky at LHS, Shows, and Ebay. I’d have to say my most Disappointing purchase had to be the E&R Sharknose several years back. All around POS. Still sits in it’s box awaiting it’s fate, whatever I decide that to be.
People have probably heard me gripe about my Bachman Spectrum Dash-8s before, but if I could do it all over again, I’d just have done without them.
That’s the weird thing though, eventually I ended up taking it as a personal mission to MAKE these Dash-8s work well and look right.
I ended up spending close to a hundred dollars on one of them repowering, regearing, detailing and painting. But you know what? Now it’s one of my best engines.
An Akane USRA 2-6-6-2 brass locomotive-fuzzy pictures,scortched open frame motor (that I got running after two hours of fiddling with it and three hours of swearing at my own stupidity for buying it) unique multi piece cab (it looked like it was in a real derailment), I fixed everything up(one of the best running open frame motored locomotives I own) but it was a real “crash” course in ebay brass. I still hit ebay for older brass locos (I obviously didn’t learn my lesson that well) and get them in varying condition- good,bad & ugly.
January 2003, an Athearn AC4400CW in CP. Thought it would be neat to have another big AC on the layout. (I had a Kato SD90/43MAC at the time) It was an average athearn in terms of motor sound and speed, but it couldn’t do a mile without derailing at least 5 times. 5 times. When an even longer loco doesn’t even derail once, and the Athearn, which doesn’t even run as well derails more, you know that I’m not gonna keep it…
I got lucky at the LHS in Wichita, KS on some Athern units, like ones below. Bought I bought an F-7 and SW1500 ATSF. They ran like I run (slow and draging).
My worst model railroad purchase was made over thirty years ago. I wanted to build a unit train of 50-foot AAR hoppers to run on a club layout, so I ordered undecorated kits (Athearn blue box) from a now-defunct mail-order discount house.
When they arrived, they were all wood-side composite hoppers that would have been rebuilt with steel sides or scrapped years before my target date!
Just had to have coil cars–and Walthers made them. Bought about 15 before Red Caboose announced theirs. Now I can’t give away the Walthers cars. N scale BTW.[:(]