I spotted a number of these while prowling through EBAY. I was going to try snagging one just to muck around with, but then I remembered that a fair chunk of the Lionel battery sets were ‘not really G’ scale.’ Anybody here have a list?
Tim, none of these are anywhere near “G scale.” The closest one might be the 4-4-0, which isn’t far of from 1:32, but was only made in red and green.
The Hogwarts coaches are, surprisingly, not as far out of scale as, say, the Polar Express coaches, because that class of coaches is smaller than American coaches, due to how the UK tunnels were built a century and a half ago. But they’re about 2/3 as long as they should be. I show some of the equipment next to scale prototypes here: Lionel's® Toy "G" Trains, from Family Garden Trains(tm)
That said, I keep several onhand for the kids to run at open railroads, and they’re a lot of fun. The ability to run them on my actual railroad is a plus. The downside to the “Berkshires” is that with the batteries in the tender, the locos tend to do wheelies on the curves.
The new “ready-to-play” equivalents have the batteries in the locos, but they require 2" track, so not really a solution.
Hope this helps.
it wasn’t so much the scale - that doesn’t bother me - as it is whether the locomotive would fit on the track. I picked up a battery Lionel ‘Thomas’ set I can’t run because the wheels are set to far apart (width) to fit on normal "G’ track.
Right. That’s the “Ready to Play” stuff, which they replaced the “G gauge” stuff with. The old “G gauge” stuff will run fine on your 45mm track. IF you buy a set, be sure to get the remote, though, they won’t run without it.
thank you for letting me know.
Well, I went and ordered a dirt-cheap new-in-box battery powered Scientific 2-4-0 locomotive with the remote. I have spent more on a good meal at a mid-range restaurant than what this set me back.
Tim, you might also consider shopping at Goodwill. They generally have lots of things of similar interest, just search on Bachmann or “G scale” or “G gauge” etc. Here’s a current example (says it won’t run, but you may well be able to fix it):
Just an example.
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People keep giving me train stuff - mostly in terrible shape.
The Scientific loco Was an impulse buy that wiped out my play money for a while.
Good thing I didn’t pay much - it was new in the box, but it was also ‘O’ and not ‘G.’ That and the $500 muffler for the ‘free’ car ends my MRR spending for a while.