Gathering accurate information about brass locomotives for my N Scale Locomotive Encyclopedia requires that I actually purchase and test out said locomotives. However, not being Bill Gates, I also need to turn around and sell said locomotives (and not take a financial bath in the process).
So, what I will be offering here are the brass locomotives that I've purchased off of eBay (or wherever). What I will be asking for them is exactly what I paid for them. What I will give you is a totally honest, unspun description of said models- IE, absolutely no surprises. Further, should you purchase one of my brass locos and be unhappy with it for any reason, I will (upon return of said loco) refund your money - no questions asked.
I will ship worldwide. Shipping anywhere covered by UPS (IE, the USA) will be free. Shipping overseas will be a flat $20. For payment, I will require a cashier's check, a money order, or money transfer via PayPal (and PayPal only for non-USA buyers).
So, that's the deal. Bookmark this page if you're interested in honest brass with no surprises. Unlike eBay, you won't get shilled or otherwise screwed here.
At this point I've sold quite a few of these brass models (and with nary a complaint). So, the system seems to be working
so far
- Price: $234
- Road: Union Pacific #7026 (factory paint)
- Manufactured: 1992
- Purchased: NOS/Unused (eBay)
- Condition: Excellent condition, no visible flaws. I did apply a small glob of solder to the the drawbar to stiffen up the wire that
conducts electricity from the tender to the engine.
- Description: The chassis is all metal, although it's also fairly minimalistic (with the shell providing most of the actual heft). The motor is an open-sided 5-poler. Right-rail pickup is provided by the four right-side drivers. Left-rail pickup is provided by the four left-side tender wheels. Current is transferred from the tender to the locomotive via a stiff wire on the drawbar. All the rest of the wheels are electrically neutral. Only the second pair of drivers (from the front) is geared (with the remaining drivers being turned solely by the cranks). The pilot coupler is a dummy (IE, non-operational) knuckle. There is a Micro-Trains coupler on the tender. The shell includes cab interior detailing. The pilot truck is sprung, providing donward pressure. All the wheels are low-profile, so no problems on Code-55 track. No problems on narrow radius (9.75") curves either. The drawbar has two holes - one for extreme close-coupling. No traction tires.
Like the rest of the Hallmark/Samhongsa line of steamers, this one has the potential to be a fine runner. However, as delivered it has a couple of issues. First off, the "stiff wire" current transfer scheme on the drawbar is simply not reliable. Yes, if you get lucky and wind up with a solid connection when you hook the tender to the drawbar, this steamer will glide around the rails beautifully - smooth, quiet, great throttle response, no pickup problems, etc. Unfortunately, it's all the luck of the draw, and you're just as likely to get an iffy connection (and with the resultant stalls and stuttering one normally associates with bad pickup). I modified the drawbar on this one by globbing a bit of solder to the wire to hold it more firmly in place. And although this did improve performance significantly, I think running an actual wire from the tender to the motor is going to be the only way to get flawless performance out of this model.
Another issue is pulling power (or the lack thereof). Without any traction tires to grip the rails, this loco can only pull about 10 cars on level track. Is that enough for a Mountain? I dunno, I guess that would be up to the individual modeler to decide. In any case, installing some sort of after-market traction tires (or Bullfrog Snot) would certainly help in that regard.
So overall, this is a gorgeous model that (with some minor modification) has the potential to be a very good runner. Unfortunately, "as delivered" it's not so great.
- Price: $409
- Road: Southern Pacific #6005, #6007 & #5911 (factory paint)
- Manufactured: 1987
- Purchased: Used (eBay)
- Condition: Excellent condition. Yes, since these have been used (IE, handled) you could probably pull out your magnifying glass and find microscopic
imperfections in the paint here and there (not that I've actually come across any such imperfections - I'm just covering my ass in case they are
there). But anyway, paint imperfections (real or imagined) aside, they're gorgeous.
- Description: All three units are powered. The chassis is a minimalistic rectangle of metal (with most of the model's weight coming from the brass shell). The motor is an open-sided / straight-wound five-poler. Each truck only collects current from a single rail (left rail current from the forward truck and right rail current from the rear truck). Four of the current collecting wheels use wheel-top wipers. As for the remaining two, I guess current flows from the axles directly into the metal truck assembly. There are no traction tires. A pair of wires route current from the trucks to the motor contacts. Multi-piece plastic driveshafts connect to the worm gear towers. Said towers are actually part of the truck assemblies and pivot right along with the trucks on curves. All axles are geared and all gearing is metal (including the compound gears inside of the truck towers - IE, none of those crappy "white plastic" gears used on earlier Samhongsa diesels). Wheels are low-profile, so no problems on Code-55 rails. There is no lighting or window glazing. A fixed / non-opertional knuckle coupler is mounted on the pilot of the "front end" A unit. The "tail end" A unit has a Micro-Trains coupler on its pilot, although I suspect that was added "after the fact". Drawbars connect the A units to the B unit. This set also comes with a Unimate knuckle coupler that can be slid onto one of the B unit posts, allowing for an A/B (rather than A/B/A) consist. I'm not sure if this actually came with the set or if it was also somebody's "after that fact" bright idea.
Paint and detailing are outstanding (as one would expect from Samhongsa brass). All the vents are of the "see through" ilk, all the handrails are separately applied detail parts, etc, etc. Unfortunately, performance is "just OK". On the plus side, slow speed creep is good, the top-end speed is reasonable, and pulling power is strong. The minimum radius for curves isn't bad - right around 11" (anything sharper than that and they're derailing). On the down side, these models are pretty darned noisy - emitting a beefy buzz-growl at all throttle levels (and the faster they go, the noisier they become). I guess if you're the kind of modeler who thinks big ol' Alcos should make some noise, you might actually enjoy the racket. As for me, I find it somewhat grating.
Noisiness aside, the main problem here is the "one rail per truck" pickup scheme. Yes, the trucks are big enough that out-and-out stalls aren't really a problem (even through turnouts with unpowered frogs). However, there are enough annoying little hiccups and pauses as they roll along that I can't really rate them any higher than a "C" (at least as far as performance is concerned).
- Price: $254
- Road: Undecorated
- Manufactured: 1983
- Purchased: Used (eBay)
- Condition: Decent enough condition - apart from a bit of brass rash (patina) here and there, no major problems.
- Description: The chassis is simply a flat piece of brass (with the shell providing most of the model's weight). The motor is a smallish open-sided 5-poler. Two wheels on the rear truck collect right-rail current and two wheels on the front truck collect left-rail current. The rest of the wheels are electrically neutral (including all of the tender wheels). Two of the wheels on the rear truck are equipped with traction tires. Current from the rear truck reaches the motor via a wire, whereas forward truck current flows directly through the brass chassis. The motor is mounted vertically and turns a worm that engages a driveshaft underneath the chassis. Said driveshaft is connected to both trucks, turning all four axles. The worm and worm gear are brass, whereas all the rest of the gearing is plastic. The sidewinder mechanism is actually turned by the wheels. Wheels are low-profile, so no problems on Code-55 rails. There is no lighting. Micro-Trains couplers are mounted on the forward truck and the tender shell. A peg on the tender hooks to a short drawbar on the back of the engine.
Performance is pretty mediocre, although based on my extremely low expectations it actually runs better than I thought it would. Slow speed creep is good and the top-end speed is very reasonable. Pulling power is decent and it has no problems on sharp (9.75" radius) curves. Unfortunately, it's quite noisy (especially at the high end of the throttle where it screeches like a banshee). Also, given the one-rail-per-truck pickup scheme, it's a dead duck when faced with turnouts with non-powered frogs. This one runs around in circles on my logging layout pretty well, but beyond that it basically pales in comparison to my Atlas Shay.
- Price: $762
- Road: Union Pacific #26 (factory paint)
- Manufactured: 1999
- Purchased: Used (eBay)
- Condition: Virtually perfect condition, except... During the course of some of my tinkering I managed to crack a couple of the fragile little nubs
on one of the plastic "truck bottom plates" (through which the screws that hold the truck sideframes go). I used some CA to repair the cracks and
everything seems to be holding together nicely (although I did wind up leaving a bit of CA shmootz on the plastic). Not that big of a deal,
but y'know, full disclosure and all that -
- Description: Both the A and B units are powered (sharing the same basic mechanism). The chassis is all metal, albeit fairly light (with most of the actual heft coming from the brass shell). The motor is an open-sided / skew-wound 3-poler with dual flywheels. Metal driveshafts run to the worm gear towers. Said towers are actually part of the truck assemblies and pivot right along with the trucks on curves. All wheels collect current by way of wheel-back wipers. There are no traction tires. Current is transferred to contacts on the chassis via flimsy / bendy wipers sticking up from the trucks. Current is then routed to a PC board running the length of the chassis via long metal contacts. More metal strips route current to the motor contacts and (in the case of the A units) to an LED-equipped lightboard inside the shell. Said lighting is directional. All wheels are geared and all gearing is plastic. Wheels are low-profile, so no problems on Code-55 rails. Shell-mounted Micro-Trains couplers are provided on the front of the A unit and the back of the tender. Drawbars connect the A to the B and the B to the tender.
Overall performance is just so-so. Pulling power seems adequate, and they run relatively quietly (although nowhere near as quietly as a typical Atlas or Kato diesel of similar vintage). These models seem happiest on 19"-radius curves (anything sharper than that and they're stalling and/or derailing). Slow-speed creep is OK, while the top-end speed is quite excessive. Sadly, overall throttle response is pretty uneven and the main culprit seems to be those flimsy little metal wipers that conduct current from the trucks to the chassis. Said wipers have all sorts of crazy swoopy bends in them, and if they're not bent "just so", they're not making proper contact with the metal tabs on the bottom of the chassis (and with the end result being overall jittery behavior - particularly through curves). To make matters worse, they're very difficult to adjust. Getting at them requires that you completely remove the trucks from the chassis. Which is all well and good, but getting the trucks reinstalled is such a convoluted procedure that inevitably you wind up undoing all of your painstaking wiper adjustments in the process. I spent a good long time tweaking the wipers on this set and did manage to improve performance significantly. However, being a lazy SOB, I eventually got bored with the whole procedure and decided to just let the "next guy" worry about finishing up the job.
Another problem with these models is that they tend to have a bit of a top-heavy wobble to them, particularly when traversing turnouts. No, not as vexing as the electrical issues, but annoying nonetheless. I'm guessing that adding some weight to that wide open chassis will help to ameliorate the problem (of course, that's just a guess).
Lastly, I'm told that the black plastic axle gears that Ajin originally used in these models are a problem waiting to happen. They will degrade with usage, resulting in all sorts of crazy behavior. Overland did offer replacement gears (white plastic) shortly after these models were released, but not anymore. Don't ask me why, but they have since unloaded their remaining supply of gears to "some guy", who Overland will put you in touch with if you contact them. However, it's anyone's guess how long this odd supply chain will last. The good news here is that I did manage to track down said "guy" and extract a set of replacement gears from him (which are now installed).
So, kind of a mixed bag. Basically what we have here are some terrific looking models that don't quite cut it in the performance department (not "as delivered" anyway). However, if you're skilled at locomotive tinkering you might just be able to turn these lumps of coal into some operations-worthy diamonds (y'know, tweak the bendy wipers to address the electrical issues and add some anti-wobble weight to the chassis). Not up to the task? Well, at least they'll look nice in your display case...
- Price: $485
- Road: Union Pacific, no # (factory paint)
- Manufactured: 1984
- Purchased: Used (eBay)
- Condition: Excellent condition - no visible flaws. The previous owner added additional weight inside the shell as well as installing
Micro-Trains couplers.
- Description: No lighting, no window glass, 5-pole motor, 8-wheel pickup, 16-wheel drive, no traction tires. Performance-wise,
this model runs extremely well in all regards except for one - it's bloody noisy. No surprise there though (given the hollow brass shell,
the all-metal gearing and the swiveling worm-gear towers). But hey, if you can get past the noisiness, it's one hell of a nice model - and definitely
a runner.
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