Personally, I think ~$500 is a low price for this engine, considering how many hours it takes to build these things.
Chris, I deeply appreciate your nice remark about my 4-4-2. But all in all, I still think that this Pennsy one is worth a lot more than $500, and here's why...
The original K4 + a tender + some Bachmann thing to harvest the motor and some miscellaneous materials = around $100 just in the parts and materials.
The next part is subjective, because I really don't know how many hours he has in that thing. But I know how long it takes ME to do even simple kitbashes. That E6 would gobble up 100 hours easy.
I know, I'm a slow-poke at these things, but seems to take hours and hours and hours if you are cutting up a frame, piecing it back together, fitting a new motor in there.
Well, let's put it this way, it takes me 30 hours to redo the stock k4's I sell, with new motor and tender trucks,
and wheel grinding. This E6 was a LOT more work than that.
I figure $20/hr is a fair wage. We are talking about very specialized work that only a few people can do, or are even willing to do. How much would you have to pay a watch maker, or an electrician, per hour, to do their very
specialized work? A heck of a lot more than $20/hour.
This guy should get 20 x 100 = $2000, if he were really being paid what his specialized labor is worth, in my opinion.
So even $1000 would have been a good deal.
I know. I know. Nobody would pay it. The demand isn't there. I'm just saying that based on the skills and the time
it takes to build something like this, $500 was a bargain.
