Just finished repairing one of these for a local GR type and forum member.
Now, I’ve been into a lot of Bachmann 4-4-0’s, but this one…
I thought we had gotten QC better.
The “issue” was poor performance, stuttering and losing power on turnouts.
Lifting the loco off the track provided no power from the tender.
Full tear-down. The power leads in the 4-wire plug from the tender attach to the postage-stamp sized board under the firebox. One was broken off (remember: New locomotive, been this way since it came out of the box).
Fixed that, the other wire fell off.
Fixed that.
Checked the wiring in the smokebox.
The nmra/LS polarity switch circuit board hangs over the smoke switch. Generally not a problem, unless they put one of the smoke switch wires across the tip of the pin, rather than through the hole provided, and ONE of the wires to the polarity board was soldered on the wrong side.
We had an electrical connection between the two.
Okay, while fixing that, the wires to the polarity board fell off one at a time.
One literally fell out of the hole without breaking.
Rest broke at the strain point.
So, what’s with the two pairs of wires with tags around them saying “sound switch”?
Ah-ha!
They left the 2-wire plug to the tender off.
Now, in the past, 6 wires was less than we hoped for, but it was a workable situation in most cases.
Now we have 4. And, apparently, they are counting on you to put a sound decoder in the smokebox.
To heck with putting sound in the tender, with your control system and batteries, right?
They have eliminated the ability to use the locomotive the way the consumer sees fit, rather mandated you will do it their way.
With the latest “warranty” information released with the 27, which makes it quite clear that if you mess with it, the warranty is void, this is not good.
I wonder if all the new release 4-4-0’s have only a 4-wire plug?
Let’s see. The smokebox board is a natural tie-point for lights, and has been on most of their units.
Let’s say you want a backup light and sound.
You put the decoder in the smokebox as directed, but even if you use a control decoder, how are you going to get speaker and backup light to the tender and still retain track pickup from the tender for reliable operation?
Ah!
Put another decoder in the tender!
I won’t be buying one of these.
And now, I need to factor in costs of adding more wires and a plug to do what I want it to do for the consumer.
Glue joints seemed to be failing left and right.
One injector was glued in, it fell off.
The pilot coupler link clip fell out, needed re-glueing.
On a positive side, the paint and graphics are nice.
Once the wiring was sorted, it seemed to run okay, nice and quiet.
but I figured it would last me a lot longer. They may not have the best detaile but it is easier to detail an engine for me then to fix one. Im not really sure where I want to go with this post but just to give everyone an idea of what a new person went through. If you are great with electronics, Bachmann is the way to go but someone like me they are fustrating and turn into a money pit. Will I ever buy a Bachmann again, probably because you cant beat the price but I am going to learn how to work on engines better. My old Bachmann will be a gret way to learn. Like I said I am very new to this hobby but for my first G scale train it lasted less then a year and the trains has bee around for how many years now. You would think the kinks would have been worked out by now. I now they have QC issues.