PIKO G-scale 2011

mole said:
Some mention has been made about the Piko wheels on some of there loco's, the wife brought me the Piko set with the B R 80 loco in it for christmas. I had one of these locos when they first came out and yes the wheels took a long time to get clean This loco had the number 37 100 01*** this new loco has 37 100 04*** so therefore must be a lot later production model the point is the wheels treads on this loco are more like LGB and not the black brasse colour on the earlier loco. from the box this one is a far better runner it is still light so will need a fair bit of weight added Got a couple of 218 locos and a railcar and have not had running problems with the wheels on any of them
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Correct about the early Br80's. Mine had that too but I also had problems with the wormwheels in de gearbox. They slipped all the time so I sent it back to PIKO. The first time they 'repaired' it but still had the same problem. The second time I wrote to dr. Wilfer myself and I said it was an error in production (they made the wormwheels to short so it slipped on the other gears. He admitted it was PIKO's fault indeed and immediately changed the production process. Now all new Br80's have shiny wheels and improved gearbox, including mine.
So if you experience real problems with it, send it back, and hopefully you get a new chassis.
 
Hmmmm!

Curved points....
 
Does LGB or Trainline tell you the scale? Nope!
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Trainline says, they make models in 1 : 22,5. LGB claimed so also. Some of their models acrtually are.
Which seems to be OK for metre gauge prototypes on 45mm model track.

LGB went bancrupt some years ago and was sold to Maerklin. Maerklin filed for insolvency as well and kicked out all the workers, which were able to assemble the parts. They started to train cheap labour in Hungary, but progress is slow.

LGB loco wheels are made from nickelplated brass. Piko makes them from a pure zinc alloy, which tends to collect dirt very fast. Similiar to early Bachmann Large Scale models.

Modellers who are looking for reliable runners, exchange the Piko axles with steel or at least mount steel tires to the wheels.

Have Fun

Juergen / Otter 1
 
whatlep said:
New Haven Neil said:
The curved point would be very useful, but is the R3 as in LGB R3..... being as a Piko R5 is R3.... so to speak!
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It's Piko R3: in other words 920mm radius. I assume that using two of the points together will produce tracks 160mm apart, that being Piko's universal centre-centre dimension. It may also be a pointer towards the introduction of Piko R2 at 760mm. Piko's track geometry has been particularly well designed to allow for both R2 and R4 in their scheme seamlessly. See the overall geometry here and, in particular, the lowest diagram: http://www.piko.de/produkt_db/check.php?page=g-geometriebeispiele&grand_id=6&parent_id=3&sss=3
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Sorry, missed this!

That explains it perfectly, thank you, my spring-loaded friend! Shame it;s not a touch wider, LGBR3, but still will find use over here, I think!
 
Otter 1,

Its all well and good stating the scale but if the product has a window bay missing for example scale goes out of the window. (excuse the pun)

I think Piko have got better on the quality front, and some of the more recent modes have been better detailed to. There is a market place for the product as not all of us want to, or can, spend £1000 on a plastic toy when you can get a piko plastic toy for £400-500. I agree some stuff is crude but at less than half the price of LGB i'm happy. I'd like to see piko do something like the old LGB toytrain range too.
 
A lot of the pricing will be, as ever, down to the exchange rates between the £ and € - and it hasn't been doing at all well in recent times. It's nice to see a company making positive noises (and products) in our scale and I too would subscribe to the theory that Piko are biding their time to pick from the embers. The only problem with that tactic is that they may not be alone........
 
hornbeam said:
I think Piko have got better on the quality front, and some of the more recent modes have been better detailed to. There is a market place for the product as not all of us want to, or can, spend £1000 on a plastic toy when you can get a piko plastic toy for £400-500. I agree some stuff is crude but at less than half the price of LGB i'm happy. I'd like to see piko do something like the old LGB toytrain range too.
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Agree on all your points.

The best thing I've found with Piko is their responsiveness and willingness to help. They even sent me a replacement part at their own expense when I stupidly lost one!

Piko's stuff is certainly not perfect, but they seem to be quick learners and really into customer service. That's worth a lot to me.

Now a "toy train" range for kitbashing at (say) £20 a wagon - wouldn't that be something...
 
whatlep said:
Now a "toy train" range for kitbashing at (say) £20 a wagon - wouldn't that be something...
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Mr Piko (and Mr Marklin come to that) should have been standing at the bottom of the steps at this year's Llanfair exhibition so that they could have seen the number of people leaving with 2, 3 (or more) "certain affordable" coaches tucked under their arm.
 
I think the 194 is a clever choice, not just a plain box, but common and not too hard (expensive) a molding job either - and assuming it's the G1.5-1/27 'scale', it should mix fairly well with narrow gauge outline (if memory serves, all of LGB's RhB stuff is a bit underscale for 1:22.5 anyway, sometimes height and width as well as length) - while it's above the taurus price range it should sell pretty well.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a driving trailer to match the silverfish coaches in 2012 if they sell well this year.

The US mogul is interesting, if somewhat unprototypical and definitely a budget item, I definitely want to have a look at the chassis. Difficult to tell from the photo, and that maybe more of a mockup than 100% representative, but I think it has the V60 drivers (46mm or so).

J.
 
yb281 said:
whatlep said:
Now a "toy train" range for kitbashing at (say) £20 a wagon - wouldn't that be something...
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Mr Piko (and Mr Marklin come to that) should have been standing at the bottom of the steps at this year's Llanfair exhibition so that they could have seen the number of people leaving with 2, 3 (or more) "certain affordable" coaches tucked under their arm.
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Since getting involved in G scale about 11 years ago (when I bought my first Bachmann tram) the cost of the items has been the main deterrent to expanding my interest in the scale. I've taken the plunge in the past 6 or so years, but I still watch what I spend due to interests in other scales (and other things).
The G scale hobby still cries out for "entry level" rolling stock to get people interested in it, as it is certainly more expensive than the N or OO equivalents, even if they are a lot smaller. The "el cheapo" stock can fill this gap, either for people starting in the hobby, or the likes of me who like hacking them around to make something different out of them!

Mind you, I find the current price of track a good deterrent to doing too much in "G". I'm glad I went mad and bought all the track I will need for the forseeable future when it was £1.98 a foot!!
 
yb281 said:
whatlep said:
Now a "toy train" range for kitbashing at (say) £20 a wagon - wouldn't that be something...
Click to expand...


Mr Piko (and Mr Marklin come to that) should have been standing at the bottom of the steps at this year's Llanfair exhibition so that they could have seen the number of people leaving with 2, 3 (or more) "certain affordable" coaches tucked under their arm.
Click to expand...

Quite agree with both the above quotes, it's only when you look very closely that the quality becomes an issue, and who looks that closely when a rake of wagons is running behind a loco
 
I've just had a closer look at the pages in the first post (ie I zoomed in on them!) and they seem to be stating that the 194 and the coaches are suitable for 600mm radius curves, which surprises me a bit, given the length of said items.

The 194 certainly fits in with the "multi livery" concept like the other locos in the range, and despite being introduced from around 1940, one of the German railway companies (Mittelweserbahn) still uses a couple of ex-OBB examples on the mainline as banking locomotives, I believe.

Potential liveries include DRG, DR, DB, OBB and MWB. I wouldn't mind a DRG one but that might have to be a repaint job at some stage, though they may produce one I suppose, as that era seems to to be being covered a lot better in HO scale nowadays.
 
Richie said:
I find that the Piko American freight cars are too small and lack detail they look like the old Roundhouse MDC wagons that were 1:32 scale . I have a old MDC 40" Reefer which is alot smaller than the USA Trains 40" Reefers. The new mogul wouldn't look too bad if it had metal valve gear but also depends on the scale as most of there items have no scale listed most of the new European standard gauge locos and wagons look over size around the 1:26 scale but saying that the silver coaches do look very nice with the new croc .
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[align=center]If the Piko range is going to be N/American then it will only have a limited following as 1/32 is not he widest scale not over here that is,, I moved away from 1/32 as I was not really impressed by what was on offer nor the staggering prices,

the pics show a car in the middle from the old MDC range and to the left Aristo and to the right Lional, the Lionals are much better models in my opinion, Piko should do well against Railking tho, and the European range does seem to be better looking

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MR SPOCK said:
If the Piko range is going to be N/American then it will only have a limited following as 1/32 is not he widest scale not over here that is,,
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Those pictures look fine to me. I believe there were a few different sizes of boxcar on mainland USA. I know for certain that there were on Newfoundland as towards the end, with CN in control they sent some of their standard boxcars fitted with narrow gauge trucks over to the island. These were often mixed in the same consist with the smaller original Newfoundland Railway boxcars.
http://members.fortunecity.com/rrpics/nffrmow/box8472.jpg < Link To http://members.fortunecit...cs/nffrmow/box8472.jpg
 
Must admit, im not too phased by the scale thing and precise detail, im 6ft+ tall, so when im stood up watching it in the garden, its a long way away, it looks good and thats good enough for me. Im more bothered about not running european narrow gauge models alongside american models etc. i do though feel, ballast is much more important than rivetts (pardon my spelling).
 
Plus if Piko do make more US locos, chances are that they will do R1, i find it odd that most of Aristo locos will not haul a train around the same R1 corners that Aristo happen to make. Good on Piko!
 
You hit the nail on the head there Steve, a quick way to get out some product.

The question is, is/was there any relationship with Maineline America/Midwestern in Merrillville, IN? THey were producing and selling some ex-MDC items.
 
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