Search This Blog

Thursday, January 27, 2011

New Rail Bus Coming

For Christmas I asked Santa (my wife) for a Bachmann ON30 Rail Truck. I'm not a big fan of the looks of the rail car but there are a lot of cool kits and examples of what you can do to customize one.

MicroMark was having a big clearance sale on them so they were only $49. Xmas morning I was delighted to find one under the tree. Unfortunately it only worked for about three minutes. Searching the web I found the their is a serious flaw with the gearing on these rail trucks.

So I contacted MicroMark and found out I had two options. One send it back to them for a refund but pay for restocking and postage (rip off!) or send it back to Bachmann for repair which I did.

About a month later I got a call from a nice guy at Bachmann who said the rail truck is being redesigned and it might be six months to get a new one! Yikes! But the good news is they offered me their new Rail Bus in exchange. Awesome. I can't wait. I like the looks of the rail bus and it can handle the low volume of passenger traffic on my railroad. Nice of Bachmann to offer the upgrade! Boo to Micro Mark for dumping the product on the market and then charging customers for returns.

Some scenery going in...



I'm not a big fan of pre planning. It drives me crazy with all the options. I'd rather start out with a general plan and start laying track!

Of course the downside is when one gets a new bright idea after stuff is laid out! Originally I had planned for this lower track to be independent of the upper, larger track. One at kid level, one for the adults.

But I've since reconsidered. The background you see behind and above the trestle has just been demoed a bit to make room for a climbing grade. The trains will circle this mountain twice to reach the upper level. Yeah I know I should have planned it better in the first place but then again I might not have even started.