So I had a Bachmann 4-6-0 sitting around with dead power pickups and decided to have a little fun with it. I filed out the tender to accept a first generation Aristo TE (two channel!), and wired it through the chuff wire, while running alligator clips out of the water hatch to connect to an 18V Craftsman cordless drill battery in a trailing car. After it was working, I realized that not only was it missing a headlight, but the stock balloon stack was REALLY ugly. So I took the stack off a newer 4-6-0 with a bad gearbox, and took a headlight off a red Union Pacific 2-4-2 tender ($1 at a train show!) and painted both black. I also took silver trucks off the newer 4-6-0 tender and mounted them on the original tender frame. Repainted the driver rims (quite hard with a brush) because the paint was mostly chipped off them. I realize the wood load needs to be fixed, but as it is, what think? Just ran it for two hours with a 15 car train on a 2% grade, and the gears not only still look fine, but look brand spankin’ new. And now they even have some lithium grease on them 
Oh, and I have a Kalamazoo caboose to match–which IMO looks a lot better than any of the Bachmann ones in 22.5.
