Well, I have a couple of Bachmann 0-6-0 swithchers with tenders and a Trix switcher with tender. The Trix is probably around 30+ years old. I havent run it in years so I got it out and of course it took a while to get it going. I had to tinker a bit. Once I got the thing to run it would actually hop on the track. On closer inspection it seems several of the drivers are out of round! Has anybody experianced this? One of the Bachmanns runs decent. Of course its the one that doesnt have tender electrical pickup. The one with tender pickup wont run at all now. Motor is crap. Is the latest version from Bachmann any good?
I wonder if it is not traction tires that have deteriorated. The newer Bmann 0-6-0 and 2-6-2 are a upgraded mechanism but pretty much the same body. Used them for both the Fireless cooker and the wood burning logging loco I did last year. However I did use a different tender with all wheel pick-up for this gal.
Oldrk, It seems my Trix 060 has the same problem! I ran the crap out of it when I was a kid! the cause of the out of round drivers was due to pulling to many cars and thus slipping the drivers. I wish I had parts to fix it as it ran great until I fried the motor brushes, and the body is damaged. Fond memories of many happy hours running trains,in my JR. High years, SO I CAN'T Let it go! Good luck, and happy modeling!!! :shade: :thumbs_up:
The new Bachmann 0-6-0's aren't bad at all. They like lot's of break in. We have one that runs 10 hours a day pulling 3 cars at our shop on a very small display layout. The first one lasted about 8 months before the brushes wore out. The flanges were worn like razorblades. The current one is getting close to 9 months old or better and still going strong. I took 2 cars off of the train and added a track cleaning car on this go around and it seems to be lasting longer. They smooth out after about 20 hours (2 days in our case) of running. The only note is to touch a soldering iron to the drawbar wires, I have seen a few that come loose and won't hold tension on the drawbar pin. Also, loosening the shell on some make them run quieter. The shell can pinch the motor and put the worm in a bind.
If you try to push in the stiff wires on the new one to make better contact with the pins on the locomotive, you could break the solder joint. I gripped the drawbar on one of mine with a pair of needlenose pliers just ahead of the solder joints before I pinched. This took the stress off the solder joints. B-mann uses an economy version of the SPECTRUM drawbar on this one. The new locomotives are not bad, but the design of the one live truck on the tender does create a tremendous amount of drag on the locomotive. At some point, I am going to put some brass strips into a B-mann USRA Switcher tender and put some Kato caboose trucks under it and hardwire the tender to the locomotive. I have never had my TRIX drivers go out of round--Y-E-T.
