You don't have to read much railway modelling social media to find people bemoaning the runaway inflation in the prices of toy trains and accusing the manufacturers of naked profiteering.
There’s not necessarily respite for the wallet to be found in the secondhand market with some of the big retailers selling pre-loved models at top end prices online, as well as some ambitious asking prices on the auction sites.
Recently I've found the best bargains the old-fashioned way at local model railway exhibitions, such as this Bachmann Collet Goods - one of the re-worked models with a decent chassis (not split frame) although not new enough to be dcc ready.
It wasn't so much going for a song as an entire operetta!
How much did I pay?
£25!
"I think it's priced to sell", remarked the person manning the stall at Perth as I quickly snapped it up.
As always, caveat emptor applies, but at that price I figured I wouldn't be too upset if it turned out to be a lemon.
Himself took it into works for a 'fitness to run' exam, and sure enough he found the mechanism gummed up with congealed grease, and he says it took him most of the afternoon to strip it down and clean it up, but it runs sweetly enough.
More work is required before it is suitable for use on Minffordd, however.
In the first instance, when he got it home and discovered one of the buffers on the tender is missing.
We're thinking, though, that we might have carelessly knocked this off unknowingly as we pulled it out of the box to inspect it behind the layout at the show.
So Himself has had to buy a new tender body from the Bachmann Spares site which cost almost as much as the locomotive!
The other issue is that the tender is very unhappy on anything except the widest radius curve, which is not very good in our pokey fiddle yard.
This is not the case with other six-wheel tenders in our locomotive collection, so we suspect there might be something going on with the wheelsets.
Further tinkering is required.
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