Recently I was advised by my hobby shop owner that this engine without the sound unit is no longer made by Bachmann. One can buy the unit only with the factory sound installed.
As I have one of these engines and am extremely impressed with its running qualities I decided I would look for a couple of these engines as spares.
I was lucky enough to find a couple of great deals on e-bay on this engine. However, all of these engines seem to be the model with the large Vanderbilt tender.
This tender seems to look too large to me. Is it just my imagination or were Vanderbilts actually this large? I intend to replace the tenders with the Hicken tenders which to me seem more in scale to this engine.
The CN Bullet Nose 4-8-2 had a Vanderbilt tender which was rated as 5,000 gal oil and 11,000 gal water. That is only 16,000 gallons. Canadian gallons are 20% larger than American gallons but 160,000 gallons ?
Glad you like it. I had one and it was awful, never ran very well so I finally sent it into Bachmann for repairs when the copper feeders to the driver wheels kept breaking off. Bachmann no longer had spare parts for the engine so they replaced it with a different steam engine. I was not sad to see it go.
Had Bachmann been able to repair it, I was going to replace the Vandy tender. I hated the look of it. MB Klein carries a lot of smaller tenders for that engine for under $15.
I have 8 of them, some with the large vandy tender, some the hicken and some with long USRA tender. One had to be returned for poor running and the replacement has been great. They are all among the best locos I own in their pulling power and smooth operation.
The large vandy tender only came on the C&O model and it is completely correct for that Prototype.
The C&O moderized their USRA Heavies with dual front mounted air pumps, feadwater heaters, and those large tenders, which they also used on a number of other locos.
Every railroad had its own ideas about tenders and their capacity, the C&O and other roads in this area often used large tenders to avoid water stops. The B&O and N&W are well known for their aux water tenders for this purpose.
The Hicken tender is an oil tender used on the Southern Pacific. I use those for my Heavies that are asigned to passenger service.
The only problem I have ever had with the wipers was my own miss handling, not a fault of the loco.
I do add weight to all the Bachmann tenders for better tracking and on these locos I modify the drawbar to provide extra room for the wiring har
Don, one more thing, they are out of production at Bachmann, but there are still lots of them out there. Try places like Trainworld, Star Hobby in Annapolis, MD, and Peach Creak Shops. This retailers carry large Bachmann inventories and may still have the non sound versions.