# Bachmann EZ Track Torture Test



## Chops (Dec 6, 2018)

I helped my bud, Jimmy James with his EZ track empire, and it is truly impressive how well it works. For five hours we ran old, el cheapo plastic wheeled back bin junkos, the sort that are too light, horn hooked, and generally function miserably no matter how much weight you saddle them with, and really not into revamping them all with pricey, but nice, metal wheels. We _tried_ for five straight hours to see if they would jump the rails, tried until the air was thick with ozone and cooked gear grease, put the heaviest strings each locomotive could handle of these stiff rolling bargain bin beauties. We had one derailment in five hours, and that was because of a king pin holding in the bolster too tight so it couldn't swivel properly. Fixed that in 30 seconds. 

Bottom line, for this Bachmann EZ track is proving to be a good fit for my ability and interests. It can be ballasted, but I am more interested in running trains than creating photo-real stuff, which is fine, but beyond my pay grade. 

My rescued hand painted Lionel E60 (the real one was six axle) with a Hobby Town drive has always been fussy, with clean wheels and clean track, but once on the EZ track the old dog stood up and barked. Never has it run better, and we really put it to her. Model Power GP and the Athearn SW1500 always have been strong and reliable, but the cars they were pulling were a mixture of Tyco, Model Power, AHM, and all of it fussy little hens, but the all lined up and worked like champions. 

There are reports of funky turnouts, and so far what is seen is that most are fine, but occasionally one turns up with a hard to detect defect, which seems to be a loose rivet upon the guide rail allowing the guide rail to float which then in turn allows successive wheels to pick it. That being the case, if I find any I will just be sending it back for a replacement, as tightening that rivet might be done if someone has some special vice or awl to tighten said rivet up, but when I tried, it cracked the cross bar. 

So, I've overlooked this resource for a long time, but getting to help out my friend opened my eyes to a better way for me.


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## Chaostrain (Jan 27, 2015)

I've never had any real issues with Bachmann over the many years I've used them. It's nice to see someone with an open mind show that they really are a good product, especially for the price.


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## prrfan (Dec 19, 2014)

I love it! What fun! Thanks for posting that.


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## Andreash (Dec 30, 2018)

It’s the full show with the 80’s backbeat…thanks, I enjoyed that.☕🍩


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## Chops (Dec 6, 2018)

Been hanging out quite a bit at Jimmy's these days. Bringing in my old trains, many el cheapo, bargain bin pieces, and testing them out. As the EZ track is so bullet proof, any derailment problems are quickly reduced to figuring out what is the problem on an individual car, as the track is no longer suspect.


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## Chops (Dec 6, 2018)

Ship & Save the Penn Central Way!






Goofing off at Jimmy's place.


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