Model Railway Forum

Sam's Model Trains Review may be old hat to some of you gentlemen, but for your American Cousin he is a new discovery. To be honest,
Sam has his detractors, if only a few, and they are quite vocal. It is de rigueur of the hobby to have dissident voices, and if one doesn't then
one does not matter. It may be surmised he has a positive impact on model rail.

For those of you who don't know this guy, he has 100K subscribers and over 900 videos, all of which
deal with model train review in HO, OO, and O scale. He does mostly British range, but also does
quite a few important American range models, particularly Bachmann. He is independent, and his
reviews are fastidious, and sometimes breathtakingly harsh when he gets a piece of junk. He
pulls no punches. If a piece is particularly good, he is impartially positive about its merits.

Having been burned quite a few times when buying overseas models of British OO, I now will not
buy any product unless I see his review first. He has never steered me wrong. I don't just get
everything that scores high, I go by the aspects most important to me, such as mechanical
soundness and reliability.

This video is a parody of a man whom I have come to respect and enjoy immensely. I hope you
get a giggle, even if you don't follow Sam.

https://youtu.be/JNC3813r2HM

Can be quite childish; his running of derailed locos for example instead of seeking to work out why and criticising models for running poorly when he has disassembled them and put them back together.

I watched a few of his videos and disliked them. I agree with Mike about him disassembling a loco then complaining it doesn’t run well, perhaps he isn’t good at disassembling and reassembling models.

He reminds me of a TV/film critic. If they say something is rubbish, watch it, it’ll be great.

Walkingthedog wrote: ↑Sun Apr 25, 2021 10:56 pm I watched a few of his videos and disliked them. I agree with Mike about him disassembling a loco then complaining it doesn’t run well, perhaps he isn’t good at disassembling and reassembling models.

He reminds me of a TV/film critic. If they say something is rubbish, watch it, it’ll be great.

With respect, I couldn't disagree more here. He's completely right to complain about poor running after a service. Its completley normal and expected to have to open a loco up for servicing and shouldn't have a deterimental effect on the running performance of the loco.

I view Sam as an 'average' modeller... and having watched him at work, he seems competent enough. Therefore imho, it is a poor design that causes poor running.

His reviews are honest, consistent and accessible... while not being overly serious or boring.

sam has a massive audience and its clear that the manufacturers keep an eye on his opinions.

I agree with stese, I enjoy many of his videos. I don't watch all of them and don't take them too seriously either if they're not reviews. They are entertainment.

Why does he take so long to get the loco out of the box and then do it on the floor. Very odd.

He is very entertaining once he gets on with it but the videos are tooooo long.

Walkingthedog wrote: ↑Mon Apr 26, 2021 9:20 am Why does he take so long to get the loco out of the box and then do it on the floor. Very odd.

He is very entertaining once he gets on with it but the videos are tooooo long.

He works to a formula - he sometimes places 'chapter' type sections on his videos so you can jump to the bits that you are most interested in. Some are too long and as I don't enjoy his running sessions I skip that part. It's still just entertainment, for me. Others don't like it and don't watch them and that's their choice.

He can be a bit of a Marmite Guy but can also be quite honest in his reviews

I was quite shocked when he did one recently on the Bachmann 9F, didn't realise it only had pickups on 4 wheels out of 10 and that there wheel axel's ran in square holes without bearings. That one made me rethink my view that Bachmann were always better than Hornby.

Also in his latest video I see Hornby are once again failing to supply enough models to the larger shops Hatton's etc meaning they are having to once again cancel many pre orders, even though said models are still available at full RRP (Unsurprisingly) on Hornby's own website.

Running on a Carpeted floor is not a wise thing to do but its his choice to do so and as long as he does not complain his new model is rough running because its full of fluff that up to him.

Very funny video. Thanks for posting it.

Judging by comments I have seen posted by the model shop of a preserved railway elsewhere he is not good at repairing models as they have had to repair his attempted repairs. Hornby like Bachmann have had spells of not using proper bearings on driving wheels.