Mike,
Particularly with offshore manufacturing. Also worth remembering that the factory (San Kader) own Bachmann, not the other way about. I don't think I'll ever forget the look on a shop owner's face when he opened a long-awaited carton of new 00 gauge locos by a major manufacturer, to find that on all twelve of them the valve gear was fine on side visible through the 'window' in the box, but was a pile of unassembled pieces on the other side. He rang the the relevant UK office, to be assured, quite politely, that all locos were tested and inspected before delivery, and therefore what he was seeing was impossible, and he must be either (a) mad, or (b) a liar.
All my bachmann stock buying was back in the mists of time around a decade ago, and I'm not quite sure either which year I bought these particular vehicles, or what the catalogue said then. I got the cars for a good price (by then UK standards), so wasn't terribly bothered, and don't think even I noticed immediately. I'd certainly forgotten when I sold off some of the cars off a year or so back, which resulted in a rush of blood to the brain when I opened the boxes to find two different options. The catalogue number on the box is 98118, which bachmann still use for the D&RGW stock car, now quoted as having metal wheels. But, a minute's searching on the net turned up shops currently using what look like official pictures with both wheel varieties for this item :
http://www.pshobbiesandmodelshop.co...ver-rio-grande-western-stock-car-p-3221.html < Link To http://www.pshobbiesandmo...-car-p-3221.html (metal)
http://www.gscaleonline.co.uk/epage...ducts/98118&ViewAction=ViewProductDetailImage < Link To http://www.gscaleonline.c...ViewProductDetailImage (plastic)
<<No connnection to either retailer, no comment on their services, just highlighting the pictures folks>>
A bit of surfing on the later site turns a reefer advertised with metal wheels, where I'm sure the detail picture shows plastic ones. Doubtless the current new item does come with metal wheels, exactly as advertised, but the pic looks like a bachmann 'official' one to me, which suggests the same paint scheme was previously available in a plastic wheeled version. Presumably with the same stock number just to further confuse matters.
http://www.gscaleonline.co.uk/epage...bjectPath=/Shops/es116894_shop/Products/93201 < Link To http://www.gscaleonline.c...94_shop/Products/93201
Hence my policy that whenever I put up Bachmann items for rehoming, of quoting exactly what it's fitted with, not just the box description. Of course you have to know there's an issue to want to do that...
At around the same time I bought quite a few bachmann kits, and the general rule was that freight cars had plastic wheels and passenger had metal. But I've got at least one baggage car with plastic wheels. Go figure.
I suspect the same issue is at least coming if maybe not yet present with other manufacturers. - for example, Piko recently released the silverfish coaches with plastic wheels, a choice that didn't meet with universal approval. No problem, metal wheels from the six wheelers will fit. Somewhere down the line, I guess we may see upgraded versions with the metal wheels from the factory, and hopefully Piko will give them new stock numbers.. So in a decade, maybe you'll have original Mk1 coaches with plastic wheels, Mk2 coaches with factory fitted metal wheels, Mk1 coaches with user fitted but otherwise genuine Piko metal wheels, Mk2 coaches that have been downgraded to plastic because someone wanted the shiny metal wheels for something else, etc. etc. And you can bet that any of them might turn up in any box. Somewhere else on the forum, someone's just recently asked how many factory variants of the stainz there are - consensus is 'lot's,and I'll bet there are only a handful of people who are even in a position to work out how many.
J.
WKDOR said:
Thanks Jonathan, Fact is indeed Stranger than Fiction!
Can I ask which wheels you were expecting from the Bachmann spec/catalog number?
I'd also be interested to know how you reacted to finding that two of these Bachmann cars had plastic wheels and four had metal wheels.
(For the uninitiated, the parts cost of re-instating the metal wheels is about £13.00 per car).
Mike
JonathanJ said:
WKDOR said:
But when they arrived, they weren't Bachmann reefers. Metal wheels had been swapped out for plastic ones.
Bachmann have confirmed in public (Ask Bachmann forum) that Bachmann billboard reefers have never been made with plastic wheels.
These reefers do not comply with the manufacturer's specification.
Err. I 'm not volunteering to get in the middle of this, but... I can assure everyone, entirely from personal experience with stock that I bought new and some of which I still own, that bachmann's specs/tolerances are somewhat 'variable'. I didn't buy any decorated reefers, but I did buy stock, tank and hopper cars, and in one shipment from a major retailer, received a mix of metal and plastic wheels attached to otherwise identical cars in still sealed identical boxes stamped with the same catalogue numbers. ie: 6 D&RGW black stock cars, 2 with plastic wheels and 4 with metal ones. So I wouldn't be totally surprised if similar things had slipped through the net with other cars too, whatever the catalogue says one should expect.
J.
But is this any of our business? I don't think so.
