# Mantua locomotive quality



## sedfred2 (May 16, 2015)

I am eyeing some mantua locomotives to add to my collection,i found a store that sells them cheap. the locomotives in question are:
2-6-6-2 logger with tender
4-4-2 atlantic
4-6-2 pacific
4-6-4 hudson
And of course, a 4-8-0 mastodon. These are all original locomotives from the 90's or earlier and not the more modern editions. Mantua locomotives certainly look great and have nice scale flanges but how well do they run generally? 

Especially the 4-8-0, it apparently has a 5 pole "pittman style" motor, am i making a good investment or will i be shooting myself in the foot?


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## greenwizard88 (Dec 5, 2014)

Mantua is generally good quality and run well. I have an 0-6-0 camelback from around 1995/6 that still runs well - actually better than the DCC version from model power due to differences in power pickup for the DCC chip...


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## CTValleyRR (Jul 26, 2014)

They're kind of a middle of the road manufacturer. Not the best, but not trash either (although everyone makes a dog once in a while).

If you've found them cheap, it's hard to see how you would shoot yourself in the foot, even if you have to remotor them.


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## mesenteria (Oct 29, 2015)

I can't recall ever seeing a truly negative impression of them. I believe they run well, have decent engineering in them, and decent materials. What they lack is 'currency'. I will explain.

The tooling is generally fairly old, and much of what you see is old stock. By that I mean 25 years or more for the tooling, and the old stock is at least 10 years on the shelf.* Also, by "old" I mean pre-Proto 2000 quality, or Atlas Master Gold quality, or BLI's quality....in detailing. Most modern locomotives already have a lot of piping and externally visible appliances on them, applied manually at the factory by small (female) hands. This adds cost, but in an ever-changing and demanding market, it also means....'current'. It's what sells, and it sells because that's what buyers demand these days.

In that respect, the Mantua brand, as a general rule, is dated. However, there's nothing preventing you from purchasing details from suppliers in the hobby and either improving the realistic appearance or even fashioning a decent prototype's version of the Whyte wheel arrangement (4-6-2, 0-8-0, 4-4-4, etc) if you want to tackle what it takes.

*I could very well be mistaken about the tooling and stock. These companies seem to change hands, and if no actual inventory is there, they may start a factory run, in which case the stock you are seeing is actually recently produced...I don't honestly know that. However, see my comments about the dated styling/detailing.


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## MtRR75 (Nov 27, 2013)

Here are two older threads with info about Mantua locos.

http://www.modeltrainforum.com/showthread.php?t=124849

http://www.modeltrainforum.com/showthread.php?t=110289

In the second thread, see post #5 for my opinion regarding design limitations in my one Mantua loco that can contribute to not-smooth running -- especially on some turnouts.

P.S. The one Mantua that I have in very heavy, which means that it can pull very long trains.


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## greenwizard88 (Dec 5, 2014)

Model Power currently makes Mantua, so there's some new stock out there. Still old tooling, but "new" as in it was manufactured in the past year and has DCC in it.


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