Spare Parts?

[Wagonwheels]

Happy Easter!

From time to time I find it useful to buy a spare/missing bit for a loco or wagon long since out of production (Triang in particular). However I have a slight concern when apparently serviceable models are pulled apart and their component parts sold separately.

This particular whinge is no doubt because I’m a EM2 fan. Not the best of models but great fun operationally…..and apparently they were made in the thousands.

Once again Happy Easter! enjoy the sunshine and the railway.

[ColinB]

I must admit I find it sad that people "break" decent locos to get spare parts. It also happens in the classic motorbike arena. Trouble is if lets say you have a loco that has broken some part that you can't get anymore then possibly the only way forward is to "break" it to gain some value from the parts. Sadly a lot of locos are worth more in bits than they are together. I build a lot of locos from parts and quite often when I have finished I think I could have bought that cheaper as a complete item. I must admit I have 4 EM2s I bought off EBay when they were relatively cheap. Two I kept as original, two I converted to a class 66 power bogie and updated the pickups on the non powered bogie. I also added lights and DCC control to that same two, so I still have all the motor parts I removed. The converted ones run really well.

[Rana Temporia]

Sometimes the only way to get parts for a model is from a donor loco which can be way cheaper than buying the parts separately. I used to do it a lot by buying a damaged or badly painted model from a swap meet or from eBay and then sell on the parts I didn’t want which often went for several times what I had paid for the original loco. I was happy and the people who bought the parts were happy as they had what they needed at a lower price than most people were charging as I used to start all my auctions at 99p, and they went for what they were worth to people at the time.

EBay isn’t what it was, there are a lot of people scamming on there, putting extortionate prices on for rare parts which in some cases aren’t rare, and in some cases utter rubbish or with deliberately misleading descriptions, and also prices have gone up significantly during the pandemic. I have bought three things this week which are the first for a while, and I haven’t sold anything for over 12 months due to a couple of bad experiences. Buyers can be scammers too!

The only way I would break up a serviceable loco in good condition would be to keep some of the ones I have that have sentimental value running. The rest I’d wait for a ‘scrapper’.