S & P Whistle Stop BAC00308 O Girls GG1 Passenger Set Review

S and P Whistle Stop BAC00308 O Girls GG1 Passenger Set

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(More customer reviews)Unlike the Williams by Bachmann Steam Girl's Freight Train Set, which is a reproduction of the Lionel Girl's Steam Set, or the Williams by Bachmann GG-1 Girl's Freight Train Set, which is the same thing except with a pink Pennsylvania GG-1 electric locomotive replacing the pink steam engine and tender, the Williams by Bachmann GG-1 Girl's Passenger Train Set is completely unique from any Lionel Girl's Train Set ever produced, being essentially a pink colored reproduction of the Lionel Pennsylvania GG-1 Passenger Set.
Note: This is NOT a Ready-To-Run set, lacking both track and transformer. It can handle O-36 radius FasTrack curves, along with traditional O gauge (O-31), but probably not O-27.
Included is a powerful dual can motors die-cast metal semi-scale GG-1 electric locomotive with manually operated pantographs (manually installed and re-installed for that matter, as you will discover after your many spills; like most die-cast metal semi-scale GG-1's, this locomotive has a high center of gravity, making it very "tippy".) This engine seems to draw a lot of juice from the transformer when trying to pull a heavy load, like all it's cars plus the cars from the Lionel Amtrak HHP-8 Amfleet Passenger Set; while that set's powerful HHP-8 moved the double length consist with ease, the GG-1 regularly blew the circuit breaker on that set's included CW-80 80-Watt Transformer. Not until I replaced it with a more powerful if similarly rated Atlas O Industrial Rail Transformer, 80W was the GG-1 able to demonstrate a similar ability to pull every single car I could fit onto the layout.
Note: Beware of tunnels and underpasses and all other overhead clearance issues with pantographs raised.
Also included are four pink semi-scale six-wheel-truck illuminated Madison passenger cars: a baggage car, 2 coaches, and an observation car, in Pennsylvania livery.
Unfortunately, history suggests that this altogether fine set will be about as useless as similar sets were in attracting girls to the hobby. Most girls just aren't interested in model railroading, and those girls that are interested might consider pink and pastel engines and rolling stock downright insulting! However, in my experience with a trainiac 8-year-old son and a not-quite-so-trainiac 6-year-old daughter, a pink train of her very own was a very big hit even though she doesn't want to run the trains as often as her brother does.
But that's OK. Should my daughter ever completely outgrow her love of trains, the excellent qualities of this set will keep my son running it, despite the peculiar color.

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