Why do they make it such a pain to get into brass diesels?

[Iain]

It seems that every brass diesel I have ever tried to open up has had the screws buried under the trucks so that the trucks must be held at a funky angle in order to access the screws.

[up1950s]

Little Oriental girls can do it .  Buck up bunkie .

[Walkercolt]

Not as bad as using the toothpicks on Kato F shells. Loosing those little metric screws is bad....very bad. But never fear, eyeglasses shops(not the cheapo-places in the mall type, but real "optical shops") and the very rare camera repair store can often match them. You must remember though, their are at least 5 common metric fasteners. DIN,Germany, JIS, Japan and Korea, Italian/French standard, Russian, and British Metric Standard. The thread count and pitch and shape of thread is different. DIN, JIS, and BMS are usually "close enough". In car and bike size fasteners they'll work, but the bolt head size compared to the threads are vastly different. Often is the same with screw head sizes too on the tiny stuff.

[TiVoPrince]

Brass models
are always designed from the ground up as a unique item.  Some companies like Hallmark used similar designs for years but little differences aboun.  Brass imports were never meant for mass prouction like Atlas, Bachmann or Life Like models. 

Time to 'cowboy up' or settle for plastic.  Personally I find the 'one off' nature of brass does not fit my 'common and mundane' in massive quantities plans.  But if brass it fits your plans, you have to decide if the pain of design is worth the pleasure you get from those unique models...

[FloridaBoy]

Sure beats my answer.  I was wondering from the title of the topic how a guy could make himself small enough to fit.........just kidding.

I have had a couple of brass diesels and sold them on ebay just because I felt I preferred plastic shelled locos.  Many many reasons, but the most prevalent one is that once you have the brass loco, you are stuck with it, and God help you if you need a spare part.  With the mass produced plastic shell diesels made by the other manufacturers, spare parts are easier to obtain.  With regard to detail, I would put the latest Atlas, Kato, LifeLike, IM, MT and other stuff up against any comparable brass diesel and put my money on the plastic.  Plus with all of the aftermarket stuff out there, you can superdetail your loco very easily to surpass the brass units.

Ken "FloridaBoy" Willaman

[ljudice]

Ken - I agree with you 100%!

The entire Kato Heritage diesel set will end up costing less than ONE Overland...

Though OMI's models are seductively gorgeous,  my brass experience has been a total fiasco...

   - Hallmark C40-8W's  - can't go 2 inches without stalling
   - Overland SD80MAC's - sold for half what I paid for them on Ebay
   - Overland SD70 - sent back to OMI twice! Still couldn't go through a Kato switch without derailing.

They should keep to rolling stock and unique stuff like snowplows and spreaders!

[FloridaBoy]

Surprisingly enough, I am batting .500 with brass steam locos.  My first one was a Key GN H-5 Pacific which had tender drive which propelled a "dummy loco" and when it worked it was OK, but often the loco's valve gear would lock up, and the powered tender would be pushing it loco and no wheels were turning.  Sold it for what I bought for it.

My second was Key (?) I got in an off-eBay trade with a buyer who made a trade of his steamer for a diesel of mine. It was a good deal, even though the steamer was in parts, all the parts were there, and when it came in the mail, I tried to put it together and it ran but not even well, and would come apart every onece in a while. I asked a friend of mine, an N scale expert, to try to fix it and months later it was great!!!  I ran it for awhile, and it was a NYC Mikado and not only looked good, but ran great as it had a Sagami can motor and flywheel.  A NYC afficionado traded me two new Kato Mikado's for it, and I couldn't refuse the deal, and the last I heard, it is still running well, but then again, so are my Kato's.

Hope I illustrated my point.

Ken "FloridaBoy" Willaman