Those little Western-styled engines are really that rare?
They are rather cute little engines, and that generic coach car looks actually not bad with them.
Do many other engines have yellow-molded coupling rods?
the recent plarail pixar woody train has yellow side rods, thought they might be a shade darker. i also have a D51 steamer, but the rods are different in that they dont attach to the front wheels and instead go into a square hole
Does these Good Westerns use the same type motor systems as the Plarail Benkei and Yoshitsunes do you know?
Well, hopefully these don't fall into the common problem with this design of motor gearing as I have tried to fix many without much success. I just had another go at a Benkei that wouldn't make it up hills and had to give up again as I spent a whole day trying to figure it out, replacing gears and such. These type typically run fine on flat surfaces but will stall on the inclines. They are also found to have most all the spur gears in them split which, in my uneducated guess, was due to them using plain white plastic for the gears and not some hybrid or neoprene plastic. I have even seen these spur gears split on new in the box trains.
I am surprised that you haven't gotten one of these or the Disney steamers in one of your large Lots of trains especially ones that are under the Junk title. Biggest problem is finding replacement spur gears as they are 10 teeth. But even replacing them doesn't completely solve the problem because of other strange gearing configuration but I apologize as I have detoured this thread off topic of Bkvir's fantastic find so back to our regularly scheduled programing...
Bkvir....if you don't mind me asking did you find this gem of a Lot hidden at a resale shop in your area?