For me, it’s tough since almost all of the locomotives I’ve owned all run well. (In fact, my only defective locomotive was a Trainline GP15 that came with bent handrails and no horn). But my father had a Model Power 0-4-0, It was pathetic and hideous. Got gutted to parts rather quickly
Probably the Tyco Geep that I chose out to buy when I was about 4, in the old Red Caboose or whatever it was on W. 43rd. No cab interior, windows a scale foot thick, growling pancake motors with the smell of burning, the usual cogging, hitching excuse for slow motion.
But a full set of what I then thought were exquisite separate metal handrails… so exquisite I never installed them to be damaged or lost. I still have them in their printed glassine envelope somewhere in storage.
Loved it. Still love it. I could re-engine it into some ideal restomod version, as others here have recently done with theirs, but it’s a direct link to the past, like electrically-challenged nadeleines, whenever I look at it or put it on a track…
Bachmann Plus GP35. Lousy drive. Very nice shell. Shame.
Probably my Revell NW2.
The motor sat on top of one of the trucks. Power was transmitted down to the drive shaft by a pair of spur gears, one on the motor shaft and one on the drive shaft.
The motor was held in place by the screw at the back of the motor, that clamped the magnet between the two pole pieces. The screw was extended enough for the purpose.
So. If you tightened that screw too much, it would rock the motor back, and disengage the spur gears. If you backed the screw off too far, the motor was loose.
There was a sweet spot where you’d get enough engagement to move the loco. But adding a train proved too much, and the loco would just sit there and buzz, with the teeth of the motor gear rubbing across the now obstinate lower spur gear.
A real Woofer, that one.
Oh, yeah. Had a cute little Rivarossi Dockside–even had valve gear. But it became known as a Duckside, for reasons that should be obvious.
Ed
Mid 70s Tyco diesels also. Long gone, good riddance LHS introduced me to Athearn… Dan
AHM and Tyco locos from my early days. Some of my walthers locos have had trouble too.
AHM’s C424.[C):-)]
Mine was a GSB rail limited SD40-2.
Mine would be an Athearn F7 with HiFi drive, my first HO loco I got in 1957. Still have it and it runsk sort of.
Ed, I have a Riv Dockside too, cost $7 in '59. Mine always ran well and still does right up to a scale 120 mph. The valve gear is a blur at that speed.
CN Charlie
Worst one ever was a Bachmann pancake motor steamer. Don’t remember the type for sure, but I think it was a Mikado or a Northern or some such. Real pile of crap.
I was going to say my N scale Bachmann 0-6-0, but then I saw HO in the title.
In HO, the only bad runners i have are my brass diesels, but I knew this when I bought them, so that can’t count.
All my other HO locomotives have all been pretty good runners… I think… let me ponder about this a while and I will check in again.
-Kevin
Might be time to replace the “drive belts”. It was my first HO loco, too, but I got mine a year later. UP it was. Can’t see how it could be the Worst, as it was as simple as a Frisbee. And as long as you were out on the mainline, pullin’ that manifest, it was smooth as silk. Not so good switching, though.
It IS true that mine ran rather smoothly. Ya know, it had a ball bearing motor. But with the three-pole armature and the “high speed” gearing; it, too, wasn’t so good for switching. Which is about all an 0-4-0T is good for.
I DO wonder how it would have run with a good decoder in it. Maybe that would have gotten it down to switching speeds.
My little guy finally got zinc pest in the cylinder castings, and had to be put down.
Ed
Mantua General 4-4-0, mine with the Cary Pittsburgh boiler & cab. The motor is in the too-small tender, and it overheats… which isn’t a problem since it runs so poorly, I never use it. [sigh]
But its on my (very long) list of locos to upgrade (re-motor/add decoder/add keep-alive, probably will need a bigger tender too).
Jim
I have thought about it. I must have bought at least one bad running HO scale locomotive, but for the life of me I cannot think of one.
My 2-6-6-4 had decoder issues.
My 2-8-0 broke, but not by the locomotive’s fault.
Other than that, I think every HO scale SGRR locomotive is still in operable condition.
-Kevin
A NWSL/FED Cotton Belt 4-4-2. Tyco motor, frame slots wide enough the bearing rotated in them, lousy details, sloppy rods, poor soldering and soft springs. The box wasn’t too bad though!
oldline1
Tyco Chattanooga Choo Choo and a coupler of AHM diesels, back before I knew better.
I don’t have any worst…
I bought a pair of RS-11s from Hobbies For Men (mail order) for, I think $15.00 apiece.
When they arrived, I found that the handrails were an integral part of the body casting, and about the same size (thickness) as the rails on which the locos would be running.
The locos, from LifeLike (Proto-no-thousand) had one powered truck each, with the motor mounted atop it. To start them moving required a current similar to that used for an electric chair, and speed options were jackrabbit or dead tortoise.
I quickly decided to make them into dummies (related, apparently, to the guy who ordered them), replacing the handrails with Athearn stanchions and some piano wire. I also shaved-off the cast-on grabirons, replacing them with wire ones. By the time I had them done, they were actually better detailed than the two smooth-running Atlas RS-11s that they were slated to be operating with…
(Click on the photos for larger views)
…and one of the Atlas diesels…
When I backdated my layout to the late '30s, the powered/dummy loco pairs were sold-off to two different buyers.
I also had one of Bachmann’s early Consolidations, the one with the pancake motor. I made some modifications to get rid of the Wooten-style firebox and was in the process of re-detailing it when Bachmann announced their Spectrum Consolidations.
Here’s the older one with the pancake motor, but missing some details…
…it was, and still is, a fairly decent runner, although not a
My worst HO loco ever was the AHM (Made in Yugoslavia) RS-2. When I put it on the track, it ran for about 3 feet and stopped. Behind the engine and between the rails were a number of plastic bits that had fallen out of the bottom of the gear boxes. The gears manged to destroyed themselves, falling to tiny pieces in the very first use. So not only was it as well detailed as the average Hostess Twinkie, it was like Calvin Coolidge - it chose not to run. What a hunk o’ junk.
In the mid '70s, I bought a pair of Tyco ATSF F7s while on a trip to Pennsylvania. Man, they were grinders and I never could get any smoothness out of them. They were among my first Ebay sales many years ago.
That experience convinced me to stay with Athearn diesels in those early days.