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A pal of mine recently scored a unfinished Bachmann On30 ten-wheeler off eBay and it's cast in different color plastics than the production ones. For example, the coal pile casting it in silver-color plastic, not black. It's a mix of silver and black colored castings.
It came with an extra tender (damaged and without trucks or internals) so he sent that to me. I have every intention of keeping it as-is as I strongly suspect that this was a pre-production example that perhaps Lee Riley might have owned.
I've heard rumors that this might have been an example used in the hobby press to show the pre-production of the engines.
Has anyone ever seen a photo of one of these in the hobby press or anything else I could learn about it?
I posted this at the Bachmann forum but nobody has responded...
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SGP posted:

Sounds like a cool find, I can understand why you would want to leave it as is. I remember seeing pictures online of production samples when the Bachmann 2-4-4T came out.

I don't recall seeing that. That's what I'm trying to find, any pre-production photos of what might be this tender...

When Lee passed away all of his belongings (including the models he worked on) went to his son who kept the things that were meaningful to him and the rest was sold at auction (some of it most likely ended up on E bay). When Bachmann produces a locomotive the test shots or pre-production testing models are usually sent unpainted. When all of the testing is done and the function of the model was approved they would send painted samples for approval. What you most likely have is one of Lee's pre-production testing samples.

BucksCo posted:

When Lee passed away all of his belongings (including the models he worked on) went to his son who kept the things that were meaningful to him and the rest was sold at auction (some of it most likely ended up on E bay). When Bachmann produces a locomotive the test shots or pre-production testing models are usually sent unpainted. When all of the testing is done and the function of the model was approved they would send painted samples for approval. What you most likely have is one of Lee's pre-production testing samples.

Yeah, I've since come to realize how many pre-production 'shots' there must have been.

I just wish I could have met the man, that's all. He single-handedly got me back into the hobby. I even wrote a letter to MR to the editor about that and to my shock, they printed it.

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