Thinking of getting one.
Is it a good one in your stable?
How does it climb, pull, turn, etc.?
You have expensive tastes!
I bought mine off ebay last year for less than a 100- For a while I hid in the house thinking I somehow participated in a crime ring.
Mine was flawless, runs very well out of the box. I have yet to put some log cars behind it. I do have plans to run it on a friends layout later this year on his 3% grades to find out how many Athearn 40’ boxcars it can pull. That will determine how many log cars I will need.
So it sleeps in the box awaiting it’s day in the sun.
A member of our local club bought one and the side rods fell off of one of the trucks before it had ran 10 feet. It took him over six months to get a replacement screw so it could be put back together, because we never could figure out where the screw that was originally in it had fallen out. That’s the only one I have ever seen, so I can’t say if that’s a universal problem or was just his, so check the tightness of the screws before you run it if you get one.
$89.95 for a Rivarossi Heisler at Trainworld is expensive? They had a 10% off sale last weekend and I ordered one - $80.95. A long way from expensive I’d say. Wonder what you’'d call one of the $500-600 ones?
Bob Boudreau
Yes, I remember cacole’s warning about the screws. If you buy one, check every screw on the model before you run it at ALL. And when you do run it on the track, try to run it where if anything does fall off…(mmm. scary) it wont get lost on the floor never to be found again.
I ran mine back and forth on the workbench 5 feet of track for 20 minutes at varying speeds watching everything. Nothing fell off on mine thank goodness.
Someone is a mind reader. Been looking at it for a couple weeks.
I have owned a Riv’ Heisler for about 10 years. I’ve found that it is
a good runner out of the box,and pulls pretty well. 10 to 15 log cars would
probably be acceptable on most layouts. The one problem that I have
had with mine was that the motor commutator repeatedly fouls so the
engine quits running-no, I haven’t over lubed the thing-but I’ve had to use
electrical contact cleaner on it more often than I should. I have also found,
in a related issue, that Rivarossi uses in their motors, one good carbon brush
and one that is made of rolled up copper mesh-kind of like a 1960’s slot
car electrical pickup. these are notorious for making uneven commutator
contact, and the resultant arcing causes the fouling problem. To fix this,
I replaced the copper brush with a carbon one and have had no real problems
since. I have never had problems with parts falling off, as previously mentioned.
I can’t speak, obviously, for anyone else’s experiences with these engines,
but these are mine. I do like the loco for its looks so I don’t write it off at all.
It is a nice companion to my Bachmann Shay and Climax. One thing cool
about the Heisler in comparison, just like the prototype, the Heisler runs
at a faster road speed than the other two.
Yes, my main focus is the GN, but I have a freelance lumbering operation
to generate some forest product traffic.