Don Black has two Hallmark HO brass Frisco 2-8-2s on his list priced at $345.00 and $350.00. Quite a few Railway Express Agency reefers in the $50 range as well. Lots of Nice Price brass currently for sale. Visit www.donblack.com to check it all out. Joe Toth
HMK's 4200s were one of the biggest pieces of junk that Bobbye Hall ever produced. Nowhere near accurate, ran like crap and had a lousy running gear. I wish Don the best of luck getting that much out of these grinders.
"Grinders". Ha ha ha! Now that's funny. On a serious note, it's a shame that more accurate research wasn't done before going to all the trouble to produce a brass model.
Jim, oftimes some of these older brass models are referred to as grinders because they made so much noise when they ran - and when the ran they generally did not run that well.
The Frisco 4200's were pretty impressive engines, big-time Mikados. They deserved a better model by far than what Hallmark gave them. Ken
I completely rebuilt mine years ago...hope whoever "borrowed" them appreciated that. Anyway, Hallmark didn't "sit" on its builders for quality. Therefore they produced a lot of turkeys that they ended up almost having to give away. I remember the "back room" at the Dallas store FULL of stuff they couldn't give away. Well, not quite. Bobbye offered me a "fill a grocery bag" with brass deal I couldn't refuse, so I did and came away with plenty of models to fix. They did have the correct drawings and such, it was their Korean builder who was at fault. (And they were probably trying to get by cheap). Remember the Katy Texas Special heavyweights? Yike. Rancho Bob
I had one of the HAllmark 2-8-2's back when I lived in Maryland. #4215 I believe it was. I still swear from time to time I see it back on ebay where it started from when it landed at my doorstep for a short period of time. And YIP, it sounded like a dying blender when I gave it a test drive on a piece of flex track too!!!
I bought one of them when they came out. All that is left of it is most of the boiler, the pilot, cylinders, cab and some assorted pieces. Now it is sitting on a different mechanism with detailed Baker gear, new domes, new stack, boiler corrected and after totally stripping it, all new detail. New tender, can motor and on and on. Might as well had scratchbuilt it, but at least now it looks like a 4200. Bobbye sure produced some serious turkeys and relied much too heavily on a certain person to provide drawings and the like. She also produced some fine models from a Japanese builder, GOTO, who did the 1306 (except for the phone booth doghouse) a MKT 4-6-2, a RI 4-8-4 that was beautiful. He principal Korean builder Dong Jin took many years to finally start building halfway decent models. The Sunset 1015 and Firefly pacifics were his. 4300/4400s too. He never did get to where he could build an engine with a lot of detail and get it on straight and his mechanisms sucked. OMI used AJIN for their later stuff and they did a beautiful job. Some of his best were the MP 2-8-4 and 4-8-4 models. I think he ended up forming Boo-Rim which is that standard for all to hit today. Frisco 4500s are from there. The 1500 models from PFM are no slouch even in today's market. They are well built, accurite and have a great running gear.
Man, y'all are scaring me. I hope that the two SLSF 182-187's I bought aren't lemons. I planned on possible motor changes and gear box upgrades to begin with, but sheesh, all that for a brass model??? May Bobby rest in peace.
Sounds like I'm glad that I didn't get all involved with brass since I wouldn't have a clue of what was good or bad. Although I did buy an old FED Disaster Series caboose for $5 many moons ago. Now that was BAD! But then, I sold it for $20 at a swap meet. Go figure.
I just ran across an article dealing with the Hallmark 2-8-2s. It is - http://www.trainlife.com/magazines/pages/790/51604/august-1977-page-52
The best running Hallmark Brass I owned was my little Frisco 4-4-0. Followed by 2 MKT J-class 2-6-0 Moguls and an MKT Pacific.
The little 4-4-0s are OK. Their cylinders are way undersize for some reason, but I think SABRR is going to put slide valves on his. You have to fiddle with the weight distribution, but when you find the sweet spot, they are fine. Mine runs like a sewing machine with a DCC decoder in it.
Don - Remind me, what did you do about the cylinders on yours? Do you have a pic of it? You did one (just painted it - we didn't do anything to change the model) for me back when I was trying to build a steam roster. It ran fine, but had trouble pulling anything much. Good looking little thing, though! I'm sorry to say it was the second one to go when I started my steam "purge" - after 1526. The first person who looked at it (at Tinkertown) bought it. I think the cash went into my fund for my five Genesis Frisco F3's. The purge is officially over - just sold my final steam locomotive early this week - the P2K RI 0-6-0. I still have a half-built MDC/Roundhouse 0-6-0, but I don't count that. Ken
Derailment! The artical posted on the Hallmark 2-8-2 covers the 2-8-0 instead! Do you have any reviews on the Mike? I don't regret starting this thread in view of the fact it is bringing out the "best" of the "worst" of the Mike! I remember Bobbye's Cotton Belt 4-4-2. She did reject them! NorthWest Short Line picked them up and sold them in MR ads for $89.98 or so if memory serves me well on an "As is-No return" policy. The Katy heavyweights were falling apart in their boxes! Bobbye had Thursday Evening Sales and even then had a hard time selling them. I wasn't aware that the Frisco Mike was a Disaster as well. At least all Frisco modelers know now to shy away from this model. The "Certain Person" Bobbye relied too heavily on turned out to be something short of a professional Con Man. I have heard a lot about him from friends in the D/FW area since I moved to Germany in late '76. A pity that his true charater wasn't known when "Miss Hall" was taking the bull by the horns and providing "Modelers of the Great Southwest" with models none of the major brass importers would consider. Just think what the models would have looked like had KMT built all of them following correct blueprints? He was a true Japanese Master Builder of brass! RIP Miss Hall, we miss you! Tim Blackwell, who publishes The Cowcatcher Magazine, co-authored Bobbye's biography. Titled "Tracks from Texas to Tokyo" it is a good read about her and Hall's Hobby House. I miss the hot black coffee that was next to the Coke (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.) machine and the Friendly "Howdy" when you walked in. Even Outlanders on their first visit felt right at home! Tim has an entirely new site up at www.cowcatchermagazine.com and the magazine improves with each issue. Pull up Engineer's Seat under Post Categories to see and read about Tim and where he is taking this exciting publication to new horizons that includes much in Frisco Territory! Joe Toth
I built new cylinders for mine and if memory serves built a new tender. When I put the decoder in I made a serious effort to get the engine weighted and balanced with the weight over the drivers. It runs fine now and pulls a little three car local passenger train over the hills on my layout. They were classy little engines. I'll have to post some pictures when I get downstairs on that computer. I think I have a couple of shots of my 4200 also. What I need to do is get roster shots of all of my engines.
I had to look back in the "stable" to find the two Horrormark mikes that were given to me by a hobby shop owner that couldn't sell them. As I remember there were two insulated wheel sets on one engine and one on the second engine that were shorted out because the tires had cut that red insulation material when they were built. This rendered both the engines valueless, as the shop owner didn't have a lot in them anyway. My options were to either replace the driver sets with sets from Bowser, or remove the tires and re-insulate. I was able to find a similar material in an old tube radio and so pulled the drivers, pulled the tires, and used the material to insulate the tires. I just tried them both on a piece of flextrack and had to smile when I thought about Don's "grinder" comment. They still ran well enough but they sounded like the bad pinion shaft bearing on an old Dodge Coronet that I had when the rear end gave out.
