Well, I hope everyone in the S gauge world had a great Christmas. I finally heard back from good ole LBR Enterprises about my AF NYC Hudson hostage situation. Seems that after I inquired about getting local law enforcement involved to go with me to recover my train, I received a response. My lost Hudson and cars were located and would be shipped back to me after sending them way back in 2019. I had paid them over 300 dollars PayPal to convert the engine and cars to LED lighting, new smoker, pull-mor tires, knuckle coupler, repair a broken step, repaint and prototypical numbers and lettering on engine and cars. Today, December 30th, just after Christmas I received a box from them and I opened it. Since I had told them to send it completed or not, even though they told me 2 years ago it was completed, I expected the cars and engine to be in the same condition that I shipped it 3 years ago. Although they had 3 years to complete the work, I guess I was willing to just have my train back and kiss the 300 plus dollars for conversion goodbye. It would have been an awesome Christmas miracle to have them all completed since I had paid for that. Well, I opened the box and my passenger cars appear to be in exactly the same condition. When I inspected the engine and tender, the connecting wires that had at least given me spark and hum are useless and the pilot truck wheel assembly is completely missing as are both handrails on the sides of the locomotive. I should be happy to finally receive them in at least the same condition, but worse than when I sent them was quite a shock. I will be selling/trading the engine, tender, and cars along with my whole collection of S- Gauge equipment and starting over in most likely N-scale for my main layout. I have lost my interest in AF S-gauge for my main layout. Sad experience that should not have happened. Other S-gauge AF fans should avoid this huge pitfall and beware of the wolves in the hobby! Hey, at least my train returned home for the holidays!
Hudson Hogger
