Jump to content
 

Purchase for the layout (loco/rolling stock/kit/other) you regretted the most?


Recommended Posts

  • RMweb Premium
On 15/01/2022 at 13:24, Hroth said:

 

The K's box mine is in is considerably thinner than the card that the parts are shrinkwrapped onto inside it!

I suppose you could blame the shrinkwrapping process...

Red & white rigid card box, the same as Wills' kits, parts IIRC weren't shrink wrapped.

 

Like this Grange for sale:

keyser.JPG.0c86aa35462fd2f8f1b6d35d3adfcd9a.JPG

 

Edited by melmerby
Link to post
Share on other sites

Buying enough Met Camm Pullmans for a full Queen of Scots set, on a whim. I even bought the Hornby Railroad brake coaches to go with them. They've been sat in the stock box  ever since and never turned a wheel on the layout.  Of course the first thing I do with any purchase  is to chuck the box out...

  • Funny 1
  • Friendly/supportive 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

Hornby / Limby 121& 153, awful runners so unlike my 31 and 60s.

 

Heljan original OO 47 - apparently the future - steam roller wheels , 2 speeds fast and 160 mph and pulled more current than a hadron collider .

  • Funny 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, Hroth said:

Not so much regrets, more mild disappointment. Again K's are the culprits in the form of various 4 and 6 wheel coach kits that were bought in a rush of youthful enthusiasm (they were sales "bargains" too). Heavy detailing, invent your own floors and interiors and castings that are so thick that a completed rake would pull the couplings off any loco attempting to pull them...  I built one, the rest are still in a box labelled "?".

 

I didn't learn, I bought a K's 14xx kit a few years ago, it's not K's fault that the boiler is oval, merely that some previous owner had probably left it under a stack of coach kits. I might try to circularise the boiler some day...

 

 

I would definitely put the K's LNWR six wheel carriage "kits" in the deeply regretted purchase box. 

 

Other regrets have been a GEM LNWR Precursor Tank with a cast white metal chassis and an MPD MR 2F(?) kit. The latter because building it exceeded my abilities at the time and I wasted a nice kit.

Link to post
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, cypherman said:

I just remembered another purchase that I was sorry I bought. The Ratio's Johnson 2-4-0. Worst kit I ever made

I bought the previous model, the 4-4-0.  So bad that I've never made it.

I keep it as a reminder not to make the same mistake twice.

 

A friend of mine, who was a freelance modeller, bought the 2-4-0 and it ended up being pushed around by a 4 wheel tender from a French Rivarossi 0-6-0.

Rodney

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold

A part built Q Kits class 50 from a stand at Kettering exhibition when I was a lad many moons ago.

 

Whatever I did to it, it would never run smoothly and the detail was atrocious, binned it in the end.

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium

Oh there's a few. I had a stage of just buying what I liked rather than any consistency. Less to do with problems of the models per say.

 

As for a model with problems - Modellbahn/Dapol A4 Mallard. It just never ran well from the start. Even had it sent off at one point for repair but it still isn't great.

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold
22 hours ago, zarniwhoop said:

Hornby blue 4-VEP. I partially fixed it, but it has gone back on the "shelf of shame".

Same here.  I've also tried to "improve" mine with pin-point bearings. Still runs like it's trying to pull itself out of a tar pit. How Hornby got these so wrong is anybody's guess.

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold

Dapol OO gauge pendolino- wouldn't stay on the track

Bachmann first dynamis system -soon went wrong -was sent back to Bachmann they couldn't find a fault but in my shed the controller couldn't find the base station.

GT3- excited to get one now arrived missing the wow factor for me at least also need to stick down that right hand walkway bit that's lifted- took the shine off it for me!

In some ways I find the anticipation of the model better than the arrival- weird I know!!!!! For example really keen for my APT and class 86's to arrive this week hopefully but when they do they will probably sit in the box for a while before they are opened.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I guess most of my regrets have been via eBay…

  1. A secondhand detailed/weathered class 25 (green livery) off eBay - it was for a very good price, a bargain in fact, and looked excellent in the photos. What I failed to notice was that it was a Hornby model, a Margate effort no less, made in Britain. It growls without the assistance of DCC sound, but the buffers are about 2mm higher than any other of my stock. Unboxed, too. I really should dispose of it!
  2. A secondhand Bachmann King Arthur class 4-6-0 again off eBay, albeit for a bargain price. Description said it ran well but on testing at my local model shop, it ran well backwards but very slowly forwards! Diagnosis - the motor was knackered! I should have returned it, but it was such a bargain price that I’ve held on to it with the intention of sorting out the motor at some point. Possibly my first real disappointment…
  3. Three 21 ton hopper wagons, 2/3rds of which were damaged - upon looking extremely closely at the carefully posed photos (taken in a manner to disguise the damage) you can just about see damage. Nothing in the description. My first eBay experience when I felt that I had been intentionally ‘duped’ by the seller.
  4. A secondhand J50 loco - a Lima body married to a Bachmann chassis. Just about ran, but died. In the “to do” pile - such a bargain price it may still be worth the effort!
  5. Locos and rolling stock for a OO scale modern image “Inglenook” layout; I ended up trading in my Bachmann Virgin Voyager and Northern Rail DMU, but still have the class 08, 56, 66 and 72 in Freightliner livery together with quite a collection of container wagons. I’d got all excited at the idea of a “modern Inglenook” before the penny dropped that the containers would be rearranged upon the wagons rather than the wagons themselves, so it was all a nonsense! All purchased for very reasonable amounts off eBay, which makes parting with them difficult because there is no way I could amass them again without spending three/four times the amount!

I suppose my biggest “regret” is not being singleminded enough to stick to one project! 
 

Steve S

Link to post
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, RodneyS said:

I bought the previous model, the 4-4-0.  So bad that I've never made it.

I keep it as a reminder not to make the same mistake twice.

 

A friend of mine, who was a freelance modeller, bought the 2-4-0 and it ended up being pushed around by a 4 wheel tender from a French Rivarossi 0-6-0.

Rodney

Mine was the 2-4-0 as well. This must have been in about 1977 or so. Curiously I later made it into a 4-4-0 and (gulp!) motorized it by stuffing a Tr-ang A1A motor bogie in the tender body under a massive pile of coal, filing off what I could of the diesel side frame detail and gluing the Ratio Midland side frames back on over the top. Even in my early teens I knew it was awful. The boiler later ended up as part of a slightly better (but still - I have a photo - truly horrible) S & DJR Johnson 0-4-4.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Opting for BR outline in "N" gauge in 1977, then buying the Minitrix LMS class 2 464xx as my first loco.

It wouldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding and derailed the front bogie in forward direction on every set of PECO points.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Two regrets for me, and not necessarily associated with a particular purchase:

(1) always aiming too high, for elaborate layouts requiring lots of scratchbuilding, that I would never realistically finish

(2) falling victim to 'whim of the week' and buying kits/models/etc that realistically I would never open the box let alone actually build/use/operate/enjoy.

After a lot of failures along these lines I'm now enjoying a more modest layout.

Mol

  • Friendly/supportive 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

On 15/01/2022 at 18:49, RodneyS said:

I bought the previous model, the 4-4-0.  So bad that I've never made it.

I keep it as a reminder not to make the same mistake twice.

 

A friend of mine, who was a freelance modeller, bought the 2-4-0 and it ended up being pushed around by a 4 wheel tender from a French Rivarossi 0-6-0.

Rodney

There's an un-made one on Ebay right now if anyone fancies tangling with plastic coupling rods again... https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/125101491251?_trkparms=amclksrc%3DITM%26aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20160908105057%26meid%3D7346357d5ada467e8e0d462579d2636a%26pid%3D100675%26rk%3D4%26rkt%3D15%26sd%3D303707755837%26itm%3D125101491251%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2380057%26brand%3DRatio&_trksid=p2380057.c100675.m4236&_trkparms=pageci%3A90084880-783e-11ec-9d08-ba2b82cb5f74|parentrq%3A6c743c8a17e0acf267d302b9ffc3e832|iid%3A1

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium

:swoon: Electrolube!

 

I used to do repairs back in the 90's and 2/3rds of the failures would be drowned in the stuff. Clean up and light oil and they would run sweetly again. User generate error every time.

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

I bought a load of (admittedly reasonably priced) Lima 0 gauge, and Triang Big-Big, for a photography project I was doing about 5 years ago for a gallery exhibition in Sheffield.  I'd had high-hopes for a large, sprawling photography and miniatures build, and actually got as far as a week of of test-shots...

 

BEN_BUCKI_Intercity_Abstract_Night_10_07.18_01.JPG.5c5fcb6f09ad28fa8e1fa28fcfc4a606.JPG

 

...which revealed that in fact 0 gauge wasn't stable enough for the camera dolly I'd be using.  I certainly didn't have room for 0 gauge at home, so after months of careful eBaying, acquiring, and modifying models, I ended up selling it all on, some of it as a bit of a loss sadly, and being back at square one with the project.

 

What's more annoying is that I realised it would work better in the larger gauges, so acquired a load of Playmobil plastic G-gauge track at a bargain price with the money raised by selling the Lima stock; but the concept for the project changed, I did something else, and ended up with a huge box of track.  I still want to shoot the project, but the problem now is both time (I'm about to start a rather more hours-intensive job), and space to set it up... previously I'd have used the basement at the in-laws house as a studio that could easily be blacked-out, but that flooded with a burst pipe and needs redoing, or our attic, which since three years ago has a resident bat colony, ruling that out from April to October every year... But I dare not sell the Playmobil G track, being as it's long out of production, and if the opportunity came round again to shoot the project, I'd never be able to afford the rails and models with current prices.

Link to post
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Johnson044 said:

 

Don't bother. Look for one with the etched Perseverance chassis. They come up fairly regularly.

 

Modern motor and gearbox from someone like High Level, Gibson wheels and you're sorted.

 

 

 

Jason

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

Q Kits LMS 10000 diesel model, bought in the 1980's. Started on it straight away but gave up after a while (after deeming it to be a b. awful thing to assemble) and put it to one side, finally finishing it a good 20 years after buying the thing!

I did manage to get it running, after a fashion, but it just sits in a display cabinet now.....

  • Agree 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium

Hornby Bon Accord A1 in Blue "like new" from eBay . Actually given Hornbys recent standards it could be "like new". Didnt run well . Pick ups had like a black tar substance on them . actually looked like theyd been painted . Anyway took off base plate , cleared pickups  checked motor took off excessive lubrication then oiled it myself . Runs very well until it reaches points when it just falls off . Cant figure it out . Back to backs look ok  .  So basically cant run it . Complete waste of money and time 

Link to post
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, Johann Marsbar said:

Q Kits LMS 10000 diesel model, bought in the 1980's. Started on it straight away but gave up after a while (after deeming it to be a b. awful thing to assemble) and put it to one side, finally finishing it a good 20 years after buying the thing!

I did manage to get it running, after a fashion, but it just sits in a display cabinet now.....

 

ISTR one of the resin kits I had problems with was a Q Kits model of DP2.

 

Another one was a GER 0-6-0 of some description, J17 or J19 I think. Can't remember the manufacturer, but was very poorly cast. Not a current manufacturer it was early 1980s.

 

 

Jason

Edited by Steamport Southport
Link to post
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

ISTR one of the resin kits I had problems with was a Q Kits model of DP2.

 

Another one was a GER 0-6-0 of some description, J17 or J19 I think. Can't remember the manufacturer, but was very poorly cast.

 

 

Jason

 

BEC did a  J17 body kit which fitted on a Triang 0-6-0 chassis and one of those was the first whitemetal kits I ever constructed.  The proportions are very suspect in places but it still looks like what it is supposed to represent and still happily operates on my layout some 45 years later!

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...