About a month back I ordered a couple HO scale train sets off of Alibaba. They arrived today, and I wanted to give you my first impressions.

My total cost for this was $275; the train sets cost $225, and I spent another $50 on the wire transfer.

One set came with 3 cars, the 2-6-0, and a simple loop. The other came with the 0-4-0, 2 cars, and one and a half loops of track (and two turnouts). Both have power supplies, and just to be clear the track doesn’t have a roadbed like Bachmann’s EZ Track (one of the sets was supposed to – I wanted to evaluate that track).

EDIT: The power supplies have European style plugs – I forgot to ask for American plugs, darnit.

I am going to post more on the track and train sets in another post. This post will focus mostly on the engines.

In mechanical terms, they are fairly decent. They ran okay on my test track at 20% power, right out of the box.

Cosmetic: Both the locomotives and cars are very much toy train quality. I mean, the industry standard from around 30 years ago is better than this, and I have Tyco cars from the 1970s which are comparable. (Athearn cars from the 1970s are definitely better quality.)

The Chinese cars and engines also have the old horn hook couplers which even Model Power stopped using over 10 years ago.

All in all, I am not impressed with either the cars or engines, and I’d recommend that you buy old stuff from shows instead. For example, I know that one of the locomotives I bought is being sold on Amazon for $81. You can find something a lot better quality for half that price brand new, and on Ebay I am selling any number of used locomotives for $15 to $20 which have similar performance and better detail work.

That said, these sets might have some value as cheap starter sets. I’d sell them for $120 to $150, while the good train sets cost $300 and up.

The track might also be worth buying, assuming you are like me and like working with sectional track. I’ll look at it next.