I am considering buying a Bachmann Spectrum 44 Tonner (Like this one), but after reading the MRR reviews and getting some mixed reviews elsewhere, I’m not so sure. Having never owned a Bachmann product, I just don’t know what to expect.
If you had/have one, what do you think?
Oh, if I do decide to get it, I’m going to “bundle” it (and hopefully save some shipping $$$) with an Athearn Genesis SP GP9. Let me know what you think about that, too, but I am pretty set on buying it anyway.
Obviously you would need to make the decision to buy or not to buy but the reviews look pretty good as far as quality goes. I seem to remember some corrections were made to the tooling to take care of some dimensional errors with the GP - 9 shell. The mechanisms seemed to be fine in each model. I am basing this on the staff reviews from this site.
If you want to see some nice video of the 44 tonner with sound do a search for the Westport Terminal Railroad and go to the website. There are several videos of the 44 tonner and others working on a nicely done HO scale railroad. It is interesting in that it is based on American Prototype but is located in Germany.
The only draw back to watching the videos is before you know it quite a bit of time will have gone by as they and their subjects are quite good.
I just bought one NIB on Ebay with a BIN price of $29.99. A case of starting to scroll the “newly listed” at just the right moment. It was the first item on the page & I grabbed it for the price. Came the other day & so far, I’m impressed with the little cutie. It was an undecorated one, with only the shell assembled onto the engine & frame. All detail parts & couplers not attached yet. Will be much easier to paint & decal that way. (I’m going to do her up as Aroostook Valley Railroad AVR12, one of three that they owned).
The detailing on the shell is excellent & to scale. The detail parts are not cheap plastic, but machined metal & also very much to scale.
I’ve only test run her on a circle of track so far, as my layout is still in early design & construction stages. She ran fine, smooth & quiet. No jerky starts. Ran nicely & smooth at low speed too. I got a great deal at that price & thusfar I’m very pleased with it. It appears to be far better quality than the Bachmann stuff used to be.
That’s the single motor kind, the ones with the (deserved) bad rap are the dual motor ones. I have one of the single motor ones, also got for a fraction of the original MSRP, and it runs just fine. Doesn;t even stall on my unpowered frogs - after I went throught he trouble of providing a wire so I coudl pwoer the frogs specifically because I was goign to run a small light loco like this, at least in my cement plant and yard. I put a TCS MC2 decoder in it for DCC, and clipped out the capacitors, runs great. It’s a PRR one but I plan to repaint it for my cement plant. Next step is probably swap in a Loksound Micro decoder and give it sound.
I have four, all have been flawless in operation with no issues. Running qualities are excellent. I added quality decoders to mine, none have factory decoders.
I have one, the older twin motor one. It’s been running fine for maybe seven years now. It’s well detailed, nicely painted and stays on the track. Gets thru all my turnouts (plastic frogs) with out a hitch. I use it for shuffling cars around industrial spurs. There are a lot of photos of B&M 44 tonners doing the same service over at Woodsville in the old days.