Kader has almost all the tooling, what they don’t have is any feeling that there is enough market to produce new items.
I would expect that they might be able to affordably reproduce the Aristo 2-8-0 Connie using the already developed gear box from the C-19.
Much cheaper to build it as it was designed. Also they will find a market for the Aristo gearboxes.
Greg
Yes, it would be nice if the gearboxes and power trucks were re released. At least they did do the B power truck for the FA/RS3. Maybe the sales numbers on that truck will encourage them to do more.
First thing that came to my mind was the fastidious Germans running through the halls screaming and pulling their hair out after reviewing Aristo’s engineering practices !
Gary Buchanan, FOG, DRS, DSS, DCS said:
First thing that came to my mind was the fastidious Germans running through the halls screaming and pulling their hair out after reviewing Aristo’s engineering practices !
Brings to mind several decades back a magazine review of either HO or N scale locomotive from an Italian outfit; author said their design philosophy could be described as “Why make it one part when five will do”.
The truck for the 2 axle locos was pretty uneventful. It was nice to go to ball bearings as it evolved, but still embedding wires in the block that pressed against the outer race of the ball bearing was not a good idea, shorting the block on a switch melted these wires into the case.
But the “prime mover” modular gearbox is a very clever design. It has it’s pro’s and con’s, but clever. Unfortunately sloppy assembly techniques caused it to have more problems than it should have, but consider that each gearbox had 4 ball bearings, and the axle ones had ceramic bearings, it was pretty cool.
There are other design flaws in the gearbox, but some very imaginative design there. At the very “end” of Aristo, they actually made axles and wheels that could not slip and you could adjust gauge. That part was something needed for 10 years, it’s too bad they figured it out and acknowledged the problem as they were sinking.
Greg