Today I visited my LHS. Picked up a copy of N Scale Railroading and found what I think were a couple of good buys. I picked up a Bachmann Northern 4-8-4 Santa Fe #3780 for $25. I also got two LL SW9s ( N&W, UP) for $5 each. These were marked "as is". Both said they had Idler gear problems. Tried them at home and all 3 would run. The Northern runs a little jerky at real slow speed but a little faster and it runs real nice. I hope after breakin it will run better a slow speed. Took the 2 SW9 apart , found that the UP had some type of crap on the truck gears. Clean the gears off and it runs very smooth at all speeds forward and backwards. Found the problem with the N&W it has several gears missing from one of the trucks. Hopefully I can get replacement parts from LL.
The Bachmann Northern 4-8-4 will not run as well as the Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0's or 4-8-2's. I hope you purchased the new updated Bachmann 4-8-4. It has a jewle case. They donot run particularly well at slow speeds. As for detail, this loco doesn't come close to any of the Bachmann Spectrum steamers.
It was in the old cardboard box. I knew that this was not one of the up-to-date units but for $25 I thought that if nothing else it would look good as a static display on the layout. Curtis
When I first tried out my old model 4-8-4 it would hardly run and made an ungodly sound. The problem was the position of the motor in relation to the worm gears. After some carefull adjustment, it ran well. If you wish to make the effort, you can also modify the tender trucks so they pick up power. This was sucessfully done by Ken Willamen,aka "Steamguy" on the Atlas forum. Mine ran well enough to not need this mod. Len
