Running outdoors is great fun and I did this for some years in our previous home, when the Bachmann 'split chassis' models were new to the market in the early 1990s. They performed well, especially the A4, being good and heavy.Buelligan wrote:...Having run this loco without issue many times now, and with the weather being so nice today, I set up a track in the garden.
Can you feel a 'but' coming along? There's more wear outdoors, due to fine dust from the ground, and this strips the plating from the tyres, and inside between the stub axles and the chassis block recesses they run in. Once it is mostly copper on view (the Mazak has a 'flash' of copper plating, to help the surface nickel plating adhere) the model is near 'used up': the copper quickly wears through and conduction by Mazak to rail and Mazak to Mazak both sides is not good at all...