What a good article and it mirrors my findings.I too have had problems with my Pullman and a friend has had the same. On mine the table lights on the the last car did not work and the roof light did not work on car A. As I was putting a sound chip and passengers in the coaches I was not unduly bothered. On stripping the offending coaches the roof light fault was caused by the reflective material not being cut properly and insulating the the copper contact from the pick up. This was cut back and the roof lights burst into life. The table light fault was traced to a broken wire that was trapped under one of the body securing screws and had twisted and broke. Again an easy job to rectify. On running the loco on the test bed car A was quiet but the rear power car was very noisy and did not require a sound chip!!
After a good hours run and coupling the beast ( those who have one will know what I mean) I started to run it on the main line. 1st left hand point, off it came and then every left hand point. I spoke to my colleague who also had just bought one and his was identical. We took both units to a friends layout and the same happened, on each left hand point off it came.
On taking it home and with a strong light and patience I watch it creep over the point and it looked as if the rods in front of the wheel were riding over the diamond and de-railing the loco. On checking the back to back the front leading bogies were 15. and the trailing 14.95 and the same on the rear drive car.Thinking to would be a simple matter of pushing the wheels onto the axle I stripped the loco wheels out and tried. Well they are either pressed on or glued as I could not move them even in a vice. The axles are as described in 2 pieces and the only way I could improve them was to pull them out of the plastic worm and gently grind down the part that went into the worm. After much care I have ended up at 14.5 and It runs like a dream and floats over the points. I did write to Bachmann asking them if they were aware of any issues as 2 out of 2 locally rings bells on quality, but they have not replied. My friend is sending his back to Liverpool as his view is you should not have to self repair and if the same happens on the replacement he is going to cancel the order.
With these units costing