Model Power

The buzz is all about Model Power going out of business. I've seen on the trainboards and such all sorts of excuses and blame passed around; some say the banks, some say the business practices, some say suppliers, a soft market, etc etc etc, but I can say I know exactly what it was...hit or miss product and poor to non-existent quality control.

I have two MP Pacifics (and one on the way) and so far neither one of them have been good performers out of the box. The only reason I even have them is because they are the only manufacturer that currently offers a USRA Pacific, and now that they are gone it leaves a hole in the N scale steam lineup.

The first one, which now serves as spare parts for the other two, had a gear train that never did mesh correctly and no amount of tweaking and tuning would ever make the motor gear stay in contact with the drive gear. I tried several times before giving it up as a bad idea; taking the darn thing apart is an exercise in frustration, every time you move something you pull another wire loose and the running gear has been accurately described as a "Chinese puzzle box" which, if you ever need to take it apart, is almost impossible to put back together.

The second one, which arrived just this afternoon, looked great but as soon as I took it out of the box I found the drawbar was disconnected from the tender. It is usually held on by a plastic stud that is melted down to hold the drawbar, the mushroomed end had broken off of the stud and there wasn't enough left of it to reconnect the drawbar. So, I had to take the tender shell off, dig around in my parts box to find a suitable screw, drill a hole and reattach the drawbar. In the meantime the smokebox front fell off and had to be glued back on, and of course one of the wires broke loose in the tender and had to be reconnected. This was, I reiterate, a brand new right out of the box locomotive; besides the hobby shop I purchased it from I am the first and only owner of said loco.

I also purchased a Model Power Mikado, mostly to compare it to the Kato and Atlas locos, and it was a good trouble-free runner right out of the box. Spookshow says the Mikado suffers from the same QC issues as the Pacific so it looks like I just lucked out and got a good one. The gold standard for Mikados continues to be the now-discontinued Kato of course, hopefully they will resume production for at least another run or two sometime in the future. I have two of the Katos, one with the GHQ Pennsylvania L1 conversion (and the other one will get it as soon as I get around to it), and they are phenomenal runners; all the hype is true.

One last thing...Rapido couplers with no knuckle coupler offered? Seriously? In this day and age?

So to recap - hit or miss products, seemingly non-existent quality control, and little to no apparent effort to improve either one. Bachmann, on the other hand, has steadily improved in both quality of product and consistency. If you would like to see how to do it...or how not to...these two companies are good (and bad) examples to follow. Yeah, good riddance Model Power.

It sure would be nice to have a quality Pacific from Bachmann or Kato, the Bachmann Spectrum line would benefit from another offering and Kato already makes a suitable chassis for it in their JNR models. For that matter, whoever owns the toolings now from the old Ted Brandon designed Rivarrosi Mikado and Pacific steamers that have been distributed by Atlas and ConCor, now would be a good time to bring both of them back with improved materials for the frames and better motors, maybe gearmotors to improve the low speed performance. One can dream at least.

And finally, for those of us who have been in N scale for a while, how odd is it to say "Gosh, I wish Bachmann would make a 4-6-2 steam locomotive!"