A tale of woe, please help.
Earlier this year I purchased a weathered, #10 of 10, Denver & Rio Grande Western K-27 (mud hen) narrow gauge engine distributed by Iron Horse Hobbies ( maybe 20 to 30 years old) but in excellent condition. After learning that it it had lights only, I wanted to have sound and smoke installed which I believe all steam engines should have, space permitting. I located a vendor that does this and the seller packaged the engine and tender well and sent it to this company.
It took months for the install, also advising me that smoke units were no longer available and proceeded with the install.
After completion the vendor sent me a short video showing the engine running with sound; fine.
They returned it to me. Because of other duties it took me a few weeks to open only to find the tether from the tender completely severed and some loose coal in the wooden box. I thought that was the only problem and fixable
I called the vendor and he was shocked saying he packaged the engine himself and asked me to send a picture of said tether and he would send a replacement mentioning that it was easy to install.
A few more weeks passed and received the new tether with instructions.
I sat on it a few more weeks and decided to hand carry to a repair person for installation.
More weeks passed and he finally called me and said the following:
1. front pilot, tender base, tender ladder and cab drop plate all bent.
Here is the worse part: the motor universal part is broken and cant be fixed engine wont run!
His opinion was that this engine didn't have freely moving wheels and was thrust forward during shipping and damaged probably because insufficient packaging and being thrown around in a truck
Does anyone know who could take a shot of fixing this engine; too expensive to use as a placeholder.
Note: one only has 2 weeks to file a claim with shipper of which I should have done immediately.
Thank you taking the time to read!
