arealgijoe
Member
I have a old Minitrix 0-6-0 old time lock that I converted to DCC this past year. Despite it being smallish, the DCC conversion was easy to do. There's even room to stuff it over the motor, under the cab roof. I was thinking about having another old time DCC loco. I found one on flea-bay almost like the one I already had, same scheme but a coal burner instead of wood (ya can tell by the some-stack) It was about $10 cheaper than Nscale supply, and the seller said he tested it and it ran good in both directions. These are pretty well made, especially for older Nscale locos.
I won(??) it since nobody else even bid on it. As usual when it cam I first placed it on my test oval. Would not budge a silly mm in either direction and the headlight did not light either, also claimed to be working by the seller. Thinking that it worked before shipping, I expected something broke in shipping. I took the boiler off and quickly discovered the motor was NOT even wired up at all. So far in my lifetime I have never seen an electrical motor run without being connected to some power source. I probed the motor on my train bench and the motor ran fine both directions when power was applied.
For a test I wired the motor up so it could get power thru the wheels. The contacts were not great, but it would run and the drive train worked ok. When handling it I found the smoke stack loose and held by some gooy glue as was the red plastic headlight. (the bulb was also bad, no big deal).
I photographed the fleabay loco showing what I found, NO wire to the top brush connection point. There were no broken or loose wires anywhere to be found, just completely missing. The quick question was OBVIOUS, how in the universe did the seller ever test run it and it ran w/o the motor even wired up??? Obviously he LIED!
When I acquire and new (to me) loco I always do a clean and lube (after the quick test run). I also found myself cleaning the gunk & glue and fixing what needed fixing. I tapped and threaded the smoke stack so it could be mounted firmly or unscrewed/removed at will.
Sad to say it was a loco I really wanted, and after lots of work it was good to go. I bought this loco and paid the min asking price based on the seller's lies. There was no way he did not know he LIED, but I took a polite stance, and offered to accept a partial refund. Problem is I had already invested both time and money to fix it, and now that it runs OK (but not quite as good/smooth as my other similar (exactly the same, under the hood) loco. He wants me to return it cleaned up, repaired and running and I still would have to eat the return shipping!
The seller is being a complete @$$ hole. I guess I will chalk it up as a loss in that I paid more than it was worth.
Today I got curious about the seller. I found that another buyer also recently had a problem with this seller misrepresenting his N scale goods. With that found, my next step was to check the sellers current auctions. He had about a dozen or so auctions for N scale stuff. NO one single person is bidding on his stuff, Wonder WHY? I am going to have to be more careful buying on fleabay.
I looked at his "KATO" trolley, it caught my eye as I do convert trolleys to Kato drive, I am like it's NOT a Kato, no way, its a Model power(btw not the greatest but not bad either). A steam loco he listed as a 2-8-2 is also questionable, some photos show the front/pilot wheels there and in some they are missing. The tender shows all 4 axels with power pick-up and complete and some show NO pick-ups and an axel missing. NOT one of the photos show a near complete 2-8-2. Another of his "Kato" listing is actually a Fleschman (spelling?) and says so right on the bottom in his photo. I was not shocked as I caught him in his email lies over and over. rockheadm**** (Eedensburg, PA) never seems to stop lying.
I wanted a Bachmann Peter Witt DCC trolley, but I decided to pay a few bucks more and ordered it from Nscale supply instead of buying one off eBay.
I won(??) it since nobody else even bid on it. As usual when it cam I first placed it on my test oval. Would not budge a silly mm in either direction and the headlight did not light either, also claimed to be working by the seller. Thinking that it worked before shipping, I expected something broke in shipping. I took the boiler off and quickly discovered the motor was NOT even wired up at all. So far in my lifetime I have never seen an electrical motor run without being connected to some power source. I probed the motor on my train bench and the motor ran fine both directions when power was applied.
For a test I wired the motor up so it could get power thru the wheels. The contacts were not great, but it would run and the drive train worked ok. When handling it I found the smoke stack loose and held by some gooy glue as was the red plastic headlight. (the bulb was also bad, no big deal).
I photographed the fleabay loco showing what I found, NO wire to the top brush connection point. There were no broken or loose wires anywhere to be found, just completely missing. The quick question was OBVIOUS, how in the universe did the seller ever test run it and it ran w/o the motor even wired up??? Obviously he LIED!
When I acquire and new (to me) loco I always do a clean and lube (after the quick test run). I also found myself cleaning the gunk & glue and fixing what needed fixing. I tapped and threaded the smoke stack so it could be mounted firmly or unscrewed/removed at will.
Sad to say it was a loco I really wanted, and after lots of work it was good to go. I bought this loco and paid the min asking price based on the seller's lies. There was no way he did not know he LIED, but I took a polite stance, and offered to accept a partial refund. Problem is I had already invested both time and money to fix it, and now that it runs OK (but not quite as good/smooth as my other similar (exactly the same, under the hood) loco. He wants me to return it cleaned up, repaired and running and I still would have to eat the return shipping!
The seller is being a complete @$$ hole. I guess I will chalk it up as a loss in that I paid more than it was worth.
Today I got curious about the seller. I found that another buyer also recently had a problem with this seller misrepresenting his N scale goods. With that found, my next step was to check the sellers current auctions. He had about a dozen or so auctions for N scale stuff. NO one single person is bidding on his stuff, Wonder WHY? I am going to have to be more careful buying on fleabay.
I looked at his "KATO" trolley, it caught my eye as I do convert trolleys to Kato drive, I am like it's NOT a Kato, no way, its a Model power(btw not the greatest but not bad either). A steam loco he listed as a 2-8-2 is also questionable, some photos show the front/pilot wheels there and in some they are missing. The tender shows all 4 axels with power pick-up and complete and some show NO pick-ups and an axel missing. NOT one of the photos show a near complete 2-8-2. Another of his "Kato" listing is actually a Fleschman (spelling?) and says so right on the bottom in his photo. I was not shocked as I caught him in his email lies over and over. rockheadm**** (Eedensburg, PA) never seems to stop lying.
I wanted a Bachmann Peter Witt DCC trolley, but I decided to pay a few bucks more and ordered it from Nscale supply instead of buying one off eBay.