Large Scale Central

Honesty on eBay

General Discussion
#1

I recently had a situation with an eBay purchase that I just had to share. So many people get a bad rap on eBay that when you find a good guy it’s something to shout about.

I won a supposedly “new-in-the-box” Bachmann Indy from gerry.trains last week. The box arrived, and when I opened it I found an obvious repack, missing the owner’s manual and some small accessories like the smoke fluid. I wrote to Gerry indicating my disappointment and offering to settle if he refunded the shipping. I received a quick reply apologizing for the problem. Gerry said he bought two new and never opened this one, which is believable - I’ve done the same with Dizzies. Gerry thought I deserved more than just the shipping back and offered a partial refund to boot. I found that last part nearly unbelievable.

If you ever notice something you want listed by gerry.trains - you can consider him highly recommended by me.

My faith in humanity is bolstered again :smiley:

Jon

#2

Nice story Jon
Its always good to hear a nice story.

#3

Jon,

Glad to hear you finally got one, Jon. Not much of a hauler, but you will enjoy it.

#4
Ric Golding said:
Jon,

Glad to hear you finally got one, Jon. Not much of a hauler, but you will enjoy it.


I like the way you use it to haul the Presient’s car around - That or a string of those two wheel ore cars would be nice. Of course I don’t have a 1:20 passenger car or a string of ore cars.

[Ken, keep that chain handy]

Jon

#5

An Aristo c-16 cab does wonders for the looks on those things

#6

If one was to remove the superflous electrics, like smoke unit, then additional weight may be added to the lower half of the boiler moulding and inside the domes. My Indy was easily capable of hauling in excess of 16 Bachmann bogie wagons with metal wheelsets.

#7

I think I’ll pass on the C-16 cab. I like the look just the way it is. The size reminds me of a little Baldwin that runs near me in Kent, CT - Hawaii #5. I haven’t researched it, but it looks like the Indy scales out well at 1:20.3 for a very small Baldwin loco like #5 (although she is not a mogul). There are some things, like the foot rails on the tender that are way too small, but these are minor.

The weight is a great idea. I never use Bachmann smoke units anyway - They just don’t smoke for beans.

Test run last night on the indoor loop was interesting. The tender didn’t like one of my wide switches. I opened up the tender and added some weight over the trucks and corrected the very narrow back-to-back on the wheels. That fixed the tracking problem. Pulling 1 Delton hopper and a Bachmann caboose I was getting wheel slip on the slightest of grades. Some of that might be due to steam oil on the track, but the loco is extremely light.

I was thinking that if Bachmann ever wanted to release a new model without a lot of new tooling, this loco would work well with a heavy die-cast motor block. It could be re-released as a Spectrum class model in either the same or other wheel configurations.

#8

The reason it LOOKS like #5 is because it IS #5 – B’mann just re-used most of the older 2-4-2 parts to save money.

#9

:smiley: Thought so. I tried finding one of the 2-4-2’s before they switched it to a tank engine, but never had much luck. When I heard how crappy they were I stopped looking. Found this great image of #5 being towed at the start of it’s journey to the mainland. The size difference to the diesel illustrates how tiny #4 is.

(http://www.geocities.com/piersa2001/HawaiiHistoric5.jpg)