Bachmann Duck ~ Review

Well he's finally arrived! Duck and his crew have made it to be photographed on the workshop table ready for a long awaited review.

I purchased Duck this summer, and overall he looks really good and runs well. I really appreciate how Bachmann had reached out to the fans and modelers with their comments and feedback to make Duck as he looked in the classic series.

One of the first things I did was use Plaid FolkArt acrylic paint to kill the shine from the opening of Duck's cab entrance. Then I painted and weathered his undercarriage, wheels, and footplate as dust and grime, just to add an extra touch of realism.

Next I used my pack of craft wire for tubes that run along the side of the footplate seen on the prototype. Strips of paper were wrapped around the wire for the pipe's ribbons. I might come back and do more of this later, as I felt this to be a great idea to add extra detail to Duck and some of the other engines, like the approach I take with my large scale Skarloey models, to make the engines look more realistic.

Then on to the black buffer sockets! I painted Duck's whole buffer beam, and also added a weathered piece of Lego chain, as I did for the videos I made on set for the front of the locomotives.

For serious modelers out there, I recommend adding chain-link couplings on both ends. The fine scale model supplier Scale Link makes beautifully made packs of couplings that are sprung and therefore actually quite easy to assemble. I always wanted to be able to replace the E-Z couplers and change to more realistic couplers as fine scale modelers do with their realistically crafted stock. I would love to see anyone try this with the Bachmann Thomas models.

All you would have to do is to use a pair of pliers and probably a craft knife to remove the plastic couplers, and replace them with the chain link couplers, with some glue and a little hard-setting putty for a firm fit.

I was glad Bachmann added the whistle. Although there was a deleted scene that shows a two-tone whistle instead of one, this detail looks really good on the cab. So does on of the custom-made figures I made to be mounted on the side of the cab using clay!

I am really happy with how good Duck looks. He has always been one of my favorite characters from the show, and the Hornby Duck was the first electric locomotive I got back when I was a teenager. Duck had been long awaited to arrive to the Bachmann product line of Thomas stock, and Bachmann did not disappoint! Pretty soon Duck'll be busy shunting cars and pulling trains about the yard. So will the Scottish Twins, Diesel, and the other characters that came out.

As always, Keep On Modeling!