What rings in the new year better than new acquisitions? Well, those new year’s resolutions come to mind, but by now almost everyone has given up on them. Like vowing to get the taxes all taken care of before it’s too late to get them to the accountant, but let’s not ruin things this early in the post…
Speaking of accountants, at work they tell me we’re getting a 3% bonus! And that means new acquisitions! It’s a convergence of forces of the universe that I’m reminded of all the things I’ve been watching on eBay, because of the gathering information for the taxes, and having the money to spend on them at the same time.
And it’s not just one or two items. It’s many. And it’s many because, for whatever reason, those with the goods to sell decided that steam engines should be sold separately from their tenders. At least when it comes to old Aristocraft items it seems.
I can understand a lone item here or there, where the partner ended up scrapped for whatever reason, but every single item? Come on! I call BS. Or profiteering. And this time around I notice that the online hobby stores are double listing items on their web sites as well as eBay. But not soon enough to avoid making a costly mistake!
A “Costly” Mistake
So a bit of background about how we got here first. When my bonus was deposited in my account, and I knew it was a done deal, I recalled the post in my inbox about a clearance sale. I think it was SPRINGCLEAN2026, but I remembered it as 25% off when it was really only $25 off. Not the end of the world. It’s still “free” money.
Well, money I don’t have to pay anyway. That’s assuming the seller hasn’t already added that cost back into the price of the items marked “clearance”. And that’s where I made the mistake that cost me pretty much all of the $25 I would have saved had I not been so impatient.
I let myself fall into the whole “Act now! Supplies are limited” marketing ploy. I already added a bunch of stuff to my cart on their web site, but didn’t see the Mikado they had listed on eBay there. Turns out it’s because their web site filters were set to only show me items that were 50% off or more. When I checked the 40% off box, there it was.
Long story short, by the time I figured that out, I already pulled the “Buy It Now” trigger on eBay, to the tune of $40 more for the same item! Tax and shipping pushed it over the $400 mark! What a dumb@$$! Shipping is free over $500 on their web site. I could have added this item to the rest, and much cheaper!. Good thing I had that $25 off…
New Treasures
To add insult to injury, these items are more costly this time around, by at least $100! And that doesn’t consider purchasing the engines and tenders separately. Since when are tenders alone worth $300 or more? That’s what the engine and tender sets used to cost! New treasures indeed! Costly new treasures.
I tried to match those lone items, engines and tenders, and bring them back together as a set, but it’s hard enough to tell what’s what online as it is, with fuzzy pictures and abbreviated and misleading descriptions. I hoped to find another tender with a Phoenix sound card, like I did with my previous scores last year, but no such luck.
I did “score” something inside the eBay Mikado, but I’m getting ahead of myself again. Let’s focus on our new treasures first before getting into all the details for each one. Let’s start with that eBay Mikado just mentioned.
Another Mikado!
It’s called out as “21504 ATSF, original box not included” in the listing. But it arrived in the original box, ART-21514 Reading #1702? It’s definitely not #1702! The end of the box is labelled with tape, something akin to “#4076 GTW Digitrax – Dallee Sound Kadee’s Two Tenders”. So it’s neither. Let’s call it “custom”.
Right away my curiosity is piqued by the “Two Tenders”. My thought is one of those two tenders has a Digitrax decoder in it, coupled with a Dallee sound card, whatever that is. Never heard of it. But then again, I’m more than twenty years late to this party, and learning as I go.
Searching for tenders for sale that might match this custom Mikado turns up nothing. Oh well. At least I scored another Mikado! And much more for that matter. To be specific, many more Aristocraft Pacifics, Mikados, and Long Steel tenders.
More Pacifics!
We now have yet another Royal Blue B&O Pacific and tender. Both sold individually, not as a set. The engine matches one of our other ones with the bright chrome wheels on the pilot and pony trucks. The tender matches the one with chrome wheels too. The tender has the original OEM “transistor radio” sound board in it, which does work.
Also scored an Aristocraft B&O flatcar in the blue livery. We already have the Bachmann one in the bright @$$ yellow livery. Too bright for my liking, but it is what it is, the platform for the Arduino “measure the layout” experiment mothballed long ago. I’ll see if I can find the IoTT episode that inspired it.
Speaking of that flatcar, I just spent an hour looking for the receipt to figure out what year the equipment photo needs stored under. The search turned up nothing! I have no idea when we got this one or where it came from. Very unnerving. It’s not online or the Garden Railroad file folders. Perhaps it’s stashed with the tax year it was bought in?
Then there’s the lone Southern tender. It’s in pretty sad shape, and the price reflected it. It has the OEM sound board too, and it works as well, and all the wheels too. But the plastic axle joiners are in their usual decrepit, crumbling state. That’s alright though. That’s the main reason I bought it, for parts if nothing else.
A little background here… In my zeal to resurrect our existing B&O tender with the gray wheels, I managed to snap the axle right off one of them! Hopefully one of these wheels will replace that one. But we’ll get back to that later. Maybe here. Maybe in another post.
The one last treasure from this first haul is a New York Central Pacific. Neither of the Pacifics came with the original boxes. Unfortunately, the price didn’t reflect it as well as it should have. Because of this, the first thing that needs done is to set up test tracks with run in stands for the both of them. We’ll get to that in Part II.
More Mikados!
So now we have twice the number of Pacifics, but still just two Mikados. Not satisfied with that 2:1 ratio, the quest becomes acquiring more Mikados. And acquire more Mikados we did. Two more to be exact, but only two on this second order, and of course a day late for the $25 off clearance sale!
Both are Milwaukee Road, ART-21513. One road number #465, which we have already, and one we don’t, #481. Both came with the original box, but as old as they are, these boxes are falling apart from age or water exposure or whatever. I may look at designing some custom 3D printed TPU packaging for the ones without boxes, but not today.
Also scored a custom tender to go with the NYC Pacific. Originally an ART-21804 CNJ on the box, it’s been customized to New York Central already. Perfect! Another bonus is it comes with a PH Hobbies sound card. A step above the original OEM sound board in features and sound quality, with chuff, bell, and whistle trigger inputs.
More Tenders?
We’re spread thin on tenders to match these new Mikados though. I already have one Milwaukee Road tender from the #465 we already have. Add to that the Pennsylvania tender meant to go with that Mikado. Short of cobbling something together to allow dual tender operation, that leaves one tender to go with one of the new Mikados.
We can redecorate the Southern tender, essentially paint over it, and maybe add some decals later. But those wheels! Not sure what to think about them. We’ll get to that story in Part II. There aren’t enough tenders for what we have, and those we do have require extensive modifications and repairs before they’re ready for action.
So we’re still one tender short. I could have sworn there was another tender somewhere, but maybe I’m just dreaming… Nope. We’re one short for the custom Mikado mistakenly purchased on eBay. But wait, that’s supposed to be an ART-21504 ATSF with no box, not the custom one in the ART-21514 Reading box?
I’m So Confused…
I’m so confused now. Originally that Mikado was listed both on eBay and online as ART-21504 AT&SF, original box not included. But we got a custom GTW #4706 in the ART-21514 Reading #1702 box that has all the tape labels on the end? How did we end up with the box? It plainly says no box. Was there a mix up?
Plenty of questions and no answers to be had. The picture clearly shows AT&SF on the cab under the window, but that’s a different listing? That other listing is identical except for pictures. It clearly says ART-21504 ATSF, no box. But I got an ART-21514 Reading #1702 box with the custom GTW #4706 inside, like the tape on the end of the box says.
Guess they used the other listing’s description as a starting and never went back to update it. But I’ll stop second guessing now. At the end of the day, we’re still one tender short. We’ll have to remedy that. I’ll have to go search eBay for another “bargain” tender. Once the taxes are ready to go the the accountant that is…
Trash Or Treasure?
First step is a visual inspection of our latest acquisitions. Are they trash or are they treasure? Have to say, they’re mighty proud of these items and they’re priced accordingly. And right off it’s obvious the “C7 – Very Good” ratings they’ve given them is stretching the truth, to say the least.
More than minor scratches and blemishes. Bent, broken, and missing parts. Loose wheels. You get the idea. Nothing unexpected when buying used equipment online, but from an online store optimistically evaluating the condition to inflate the value of items, certainly not expected if they expect repeat business. Fool me once and all that…
But let’s get on with the inspections! Some of the first items to arrive are the custom Mikado and the two Pacifics we’ve already mentioned. Let’s start with the Mikado since we talked about it already and it arrived first.
The Custom Mikado
It’s apparent from the less than pristine #4076 on the fireman’s side of cab that it’s been apart. The missing cab window is further evidence of that. The painted over #4076 on the engineer’ side is a headscratcher though. Why go to all the trouble to renumber it just to paint over it? Perhaps acquired by someone else and their attempt to remove it?
It does have Kadee couplers, even where the drawbar to the tender should be. We’ll move that behind the tender and restore the drawbar. The bell and harp hang over the smokebox door, hinge broken. The headlight and bracket are loose. It has the whistle and air pump, but the cow catcher and the entire right side cross head are missing.
The handrails, running boards, and wheel rims all have a thick coat of white paint. Must be more of the customization meant to match the GTW livery. If the paint thickness doesn’t make it look toylike, the stray edges of the paint lines certainly do. So far just aesthetics, missing and broken parts though. Like the left front crosshead mount.
Lacking the patience to setup some run in stands, the bench supply is connected to the rails of a 3′ test track. Placing the test subject on the track and turning on the bench supply sends it racing off the workbench in reverse! Instinctively my right hand drops to stop it while my left furiously tries to adjust the bench supply.
About that time it emits a horrible grinding grunt and now the motor just hums. Great! It used to run until I broke it. Reversing the leads to run forward, the motor still just hums. That’s when I notice the side rods between the first, second, and third set of drivers form an angle, not the straight line they should be, and the wheels are loose!
More Like The Cursed Mikado
Even straightening out the side rods and tightening the wheel doesn’t help. In fact, now the motor doesn’t even hum? Somehow I made it worse! Wonderful. Time to set it aside and ponder the rest of the newly acquired treasures? Not yet. Thinking it may just be something simple, like a blown fuse, I decide to take it apart.
That’s when I noticed one of the cab windows is missing. Only one fell out instead of two when lifting the cab off. Then I nearly slice my thumb open trying to lift the boiler shell off the rest of the chassis, breaking loose one of the popoff valves ahead of the steam dome in the process! This thing may be custom, but it’s cursed as well.
Once inside I find both the Dallee sound card and the Digitrax DCC decoder! Treasure I thought still lived in one of those tenders I couldn’t find, found buried inside the engine! It quickly becomes clear why “Signs of customization by previous owner” was documented in the listing. A custom harness has replaced the OEM wiring.
Or rather cobbled in, with its wires just spliced into the OEM harness and the original wires snipped off everywhere, left to potentially short out on the electronics. There are three connectors hanging out the back of the engine, not two like OEM. No idea what they connect to with the tenders long gone. Guessing one is for the speaker though.
The next morning plenty of pictures are snapped to document the state of the engine as received. The boiler and cab are refitted to keep everything together so as not to lose anything or break anything else. Whatever gremlins kept it from working last night were driven off by reassembly because now it works! The Digitrax DG583AR decoder works!
The B&O Pacific
The B&O Pacific is another sad case. The headlight ripped right off, one wire is still hanging out of the engine and the other out of the headlight, also missing the lens. At least they sent it along with it. The cow catcher is broken off, but they sent that too, and the screws are still in the bolster. Pictures show it and the headlight intact! Packing mishap?
Beyond that, the whistle and bell are missing, along with one arm of the bell harp. The fireman’s side grab rail near the cab is bent and the stanchion broken off, also pictured intact. It can be bent back to shape and the stanchion glued in place. One saving grace is the two stage air pump will allow replacements to be designed and 3D printed.
One last item of note is the bright chrome pilot and pony truck wheels. It matches one of the B&O Pacifics we have. The other one has dark gray, let’s say graphite color wheels with brass/gold accents on the spokes and rims. Even the tender has chrome wheels to match another one we have. Already mentioned the other has dark gray cast ones.
Never understood why the bright chrome though. Don’t think I’ve ever seen a prototype with mirror finish chrome wheels. Anther difference between the two types of B&O Pacifics is “ladders” hanging from the reverse gear trunnions, but only on those with chrome wheels? If you have any information on these differences, please drop a comment!
The NYC Pacific
The NYC Pacific is in pretty sad shape too. The listing says, “Rated C-6: Very Good”. My eye! The cow catcher, bell, whistle, and air pump are all missing. The description says it has the newer (SD-45 style) smoke unit, but the pictures show the old style one with the tool box fluid reservoir and switch on the pilot! It definitely has the old fan driven one.
The description also states “All new motor block – Can Motor Drive with Built In Cooling Fan – All Drive Axles Gear Driven – 3 Patent Ball Bearing Equipped Prime Mover Gearboxes – 2 Flywheels For Better Locomotive Performance”, which scares me for a number of reasons.
First, does “All new motor block – Can Motor Drive with Built In Cooling Fan” mean the motor was replaced because the old one was faulty or is this just marketing hype copied directly from an Aristocraft brochure? I don’t recall any of the motor blocks having a cooling fan, but again, I’m no expert on Aristocraft.
Next is “All Drive Axles Gear Driven – 3 Patent Ball Bearing Equipped Prime Mover Gearboxes”. I’m looking right at the damned thing and there are still only two gear driven axles with the center drivers spring loaded and floating, independent of the drive shaft between the front and rear driver axles. Same as every other Aristocraft Pacific we have.
All the listing says is Functional, but judging from the God awful gear grinding sounds it’s making, either the “All new motor block” was incorrectly installed or the old drivetrain is completely worn out and needs replaced with an “All new motor block” and “Patent Ball Bearing Equipped Prime Mover Gearboxes”.
The Southern Tender
The Southern tender is another enigma. The listing says no box, yet it arrived in a box? It’s labelled “ART-21404 Burlington / 2 Piece Set” perhaps? Hard to tell. Key portions of the label have been torn away. This one was listed as “C5 – Good”? Really? Thinking I need to subtract an entire condition level when considering their items in the future.
The picture shows three of the four wheelsets missing! It’s the typical plastic axle joiner “decrepitude” that I’ve already designed and 3D printed replacements for. The listing says ART-21405, just adding to the discrepancy list. Not going to say it’s a bargain at $80, but it’s a far cry from the $300-$395 they want for other tenders in better shape.
The paint is chipped and all the brass grab irons need polished. The decoupling lever is bent all over the place along its length, including the levers on both ends, and it needs a good polishing as well. That is, if it can be straightened out without noticeable bends! It has a working OEM sound board, and Aristocraft couplers on both ends.
The pictures show all of this, so at least it’s no surprise. Another comical item is there’s a piece of a leaf spring from the trucks stuck between the tender body and grab iron. Both trucks have all their leaf springs intact, so either someone’s looking for it in their shipment, or the original owner had broken a truck elsewhere that ended up here.
Couplers On Both Ends?
Have to wonder, what’s up with couplers on both ends of the tenders? Two of them have Aristocraft couplers on both ends. And of those, one of them has a broken coupler. It’s the decrepit Southern one, surprise, surprise. That’s alright, we’ll be replacing it with the standard drawbar anyway.
Seem to remember one of those engines having a Kadee coupler on the drawbar too. That’s right, the custom Mikado. Had to go back and look! It has couplers on both ends as well. An Aristocraft coupler up front, and a Kadee on the drawbar. That Aristocraft uncoupling “tab” interferes with the 3D printer cow catcher where a Kadee may have cleared.
But I’m getting ahead of myself again. We’ll save that for Part II. So let’s wrap this up and end on a positive note. I am very pleased with the new treasures acquired with my bonus this year. I’ve already spent more time on them than I should have, but made tremendous progress toward restoring them.
At the very least, replacing the missing parts is complete, with one exception. But I’ll leave that as a teaser for the next post.
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