I had that same concern with a couple of my old Blue Box models, so I did two things. One, I had picked up a copy of Model Railroader Cyclopedia Vol 2 Diesel Locomotives. It's out of print but I think you can find it at swap meets and probably on eBay. It has great drawings and photos of most locos. Two, there are a bunch of websites that have great pictures of locomotives. Fallen Flags is one, and is great for older equipment. There are others, just Google it. Good luck!
I'm of both schools of thought when it comes to Athearn BB. (A majority of my engines and quite a few of my freight cars are BB.) They are good runners and were simple to build. The equipment is also easy to work on if there is a problem.
However, as already mentioned there are a few schemes that aren't prototypical. (The SDP40 being a very good example. Only two railroads actually had them.) I have also heard that the 50' gondola is not prototypical either. (It was made to fit the box. I don 't know whether to believe that or not.)
BB were also good for kitbashing. I have a nine of my non-Athearn shelled engines that use BB drives in them. (8 Tythearns and a Bachthearn. Underframes have been modified a little but the drive is stock.) I also have a bunch of cars that I have bashed. (Nine modified 34' hoppers that are my take on woodchip cars. A couple of gondolas that have been bashed to pulpwood cars. I am also bashing a NP prototype caboose from a pair of BB cupola cabooses.)
Where I can, even to this day, I still try to find BBs where possible. (One of my newest additions to my fleet is an SD40-2. It is a BB that I had to scrounge the parts for but I knew I wanted a BB for their running capabilities.)
cedarwoodron...Can't say enough good things about old Irv's stuff- it's kept me in the hobby for 5 decades now...
I agree: Athearn, along with Varney, Model Die Casting, and others, offered a reasonably-priced entry into the hobby for the average person, who might not have had much aptitude or appetite for scratchbuilding or even for building some of the more involved wood and metal kits of that time.That some paint schemes were fanciful or details not true to prototype mattered little, and if you stayed in the hobby, you often learned not only what might be wrong with the cars, but also how to correct those things. For those who cared to try, there's a great sense of satisfaction to be had, and opportunities to learn new skills, too.I still have lots of Athearn Blue Box cars on my layout, and they fit in just fine with the "higher end" stuff that's currently available...
Athearn, unmodified...
Athearn, modified somewhat...
likewise...
...and more...
...a couple from the same kit...
...a few more details...
An Athearn Blue Box coach, turned into a fairly close representation of a CNR prototype wood express car...
...an Athearn wood reefer (with steel ends) converted into an all-wood bodied insulated express car...
...and this, formerly an Athearn Blue Box steel boxcar body shell, one of eight bought for a buck-or-so, converted into a freelanced boxcar...
All that remains of the original is part of the sides, and they were lowered. The roof, ends, underbody, and trucks are from elsewhere, as are the doors, details, and car weights.Everything shown has been painted and lettered, done on kits either stripped of paint and lettering , or bought undecorated.
Wayne
Maybe it's the nostalgia thing- it was an Athearn SP flat car that I proudly bought in early Jan 1966 to add to my then-first Athearn train set received for Christmas. To me, I still enjoy picking up several BB kits at swap meets every time I go. My diesel engine collection +40 engines is mostly Athearn and as I replace an old grain of wheat bulb with a led and resistor from time to time, or remotor and old Athearn loco, the genius of those old designs is revealed in the ease with which their operation can be improved. Can't say enough good things about old Irv's stuff- it's kept me in the hobby for 5 decades now.
Cedarwoodron
And I agree with Frank, that's the way it was done. The road number might not be perfectly protoypical to the model.
Athearn is a good bang for the buck. After you do some serious searching for your prototype, and can't find that exact loco, as I mentioned earlier, add what details you'd like to add, as to what you find on your search.
Athearn's are also great candidates for switching to DCC, I've done many. Just do the stall current test first, just to be sure. You want under or at 0.70 amps, as most decoders are rated for 1.0 amp, with a peak at 1.5.
And their freight cars, you can detail them as you wish, with grab irons, ladders, etc.
That will get you started, and from there, you can move to what you want.
Mike.
My You Tube
BNSF UP and others modeler Thnx. I have the exact roadnumber as the one in the picture.
Thnx. I have the exact roadnumber as the one in the picture.
All the Athearns made at that time as that one had the same road number. If you wanted a different number, You had to change it.
Take Care!
Frank
I'm beginning to realize that Windows 10 and sound decoders have a lot in common. There are so many things you have to change in order to get them to work the way you want.
To My recollection of seeing them inperson.....some had the hand rails painted as shown, but some did not.....only painted yellow where You would grab on to them. I chose to paint them all. The engine comes painted from the box.....you have to apply the wire, (which is music wire) to the stanchions and then the pre-drilled holes in the model. They are black wire. I used Floquil ATSF Yellow for that..no longer available. The calf or B was a BN engine that I re-painted, using Model Master Insignia Blue and mixed My own Yellow with Tamiya acrylic Lemon Yellow and Tamiya Brown.....took a few tries to get it right....but it turned out to be a perfect match so I made a bunch of it. Decals are dry transfers for the name.
Just about all Floquil colors matched Athearn's railroad colors and then some.
Floquil cross reference chart:
https://www.microscale.com/Floquil%20Color%20Chart.pdf
Thank You, Mike........
That is a busy little place:
Thats a great scene Frank !
One other thing that I liked about the Athearn BB freight cars, is the fact that the doors would slide open/close. You could put some detail in the car, loading/unloading, slide the door closed and move the car in a train anywhere.
Door closed...being spotted at cust:
View of what is inside with door open:
Spotted...being unloaded at dock:
Many of the early Athearn kits were really pretty clever in their design. Strong plastic cement was just coming into use, so many cars were designed to be built without glue. For example, on a house car, there was a weight under the car held in place by the underframe, which was held in place by the screws for the trucks.
I always thought the 40' wood and 40' steel reefers were well thought out. Most reefers had yellow or orange sides, with boxcar red or black roof and ends. Athearn reefers had the sides and floor as one piece, and roof and ends as another piece. Back in the day when you 'rolled your own', you didn't have to mask anything to get a nice clean color separation.
Bayfield Transfer RailwayI have several BBs
Russell
I have several BBs that I've detailed to my heart's delight and painted and lettered for my road.I've upgraded them with can motors and decoders.I run them with "scale width hoods" in the same layout, and sleep very well at night, thank you very nicely.
Disclaimer: This post may contain humor, sarcasm, and/or flatulence.
Michael Mornard
Bringing the North Woods to South Dakota!
I should stay out of this question, but, because I am who I am, I have to jump in. Personally, I have always been a fan of BB engines. Open up the box, add the decoder (or not) and they run. I once met a modeler who insisted that I see his Santa Fe (black yard scheme) switcher. The "old" night lighting tape along the bottom of the body was (he claimed) 3 inches too wide. This is an HO scale engine. 3 inches in HO scale is pretty narrow. But I viewed the work and was impressed. Looked and operated fine and the realism was great - right up until the telephone pole came down from the sky to uncouple the cut of cars! As has been noted, BB engines generall run well and look "pretty good". But no one other than you knows if they are good enough for you.
Old Fat Robert
This site is good:
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/
And so is this one:
http://www.railpictures.net/us/
There are others, along with historical societies for a specific railroad, and there are some photo sites that are railroad specific, like:
http://wc2scale.org/index.php
You need to do the leg work, and search around. The WWW is your friend.
One thing is for certain, prototype or not......they would always run right out of the box........you can't say that for a lot of higher priced models today:
fallen flags.
I do care more about accuracy. If it is missing details, it is ok. I just need a model that starts of with the right decals, trucks, road numbers, etc. Just the basics. Oh, also, if anyone coud recommend a good prototype website, that would be great, because I did a ton of research on just these two, and came up with next to nothing
mbinsewi Their locos have been accused of the hoods being too wide, and the reason was to fit the flat side motors they used, but I think most of that was early models...
Their locos have been accused of the hoods being too wide, and the reason was to fit the flat side motors they used, but I think most of that was early models...
The Athearn SW7 has a close to prototype hood width. The Athearn S12 is a wide body, as becomes evident when compared to a Bowser version.
Ed
After a while you can go nuts dealing with issues like "is this realistic/authentic?" and "how close is close?" because someone out there has always gone one step further to say "no" and "not enough."
I know some guys who have banished certain makes of equipment, Athearn blue box among them, from their layouts either because of their own exacting standards, or, I suspect, although they rarely would admit this, the exacting standards of others whose approval they seek.
How fussy/knowledgeable are you about issues of accuracy and authenticity, and how troubled are you by deviations from accuracy that you know of? Asking others on this Forum or elsewhere will get responses which run a huge gamut of extremes of opinion.
I am fussy about things when it comes to era, and I have gradually weeded out the rolling stock that is too new or too old for my era (either by car type or painting and lettering scheme), and am adding ACI labels and cushioned underframe coupler pockets to cars which warrant them. Where I have found I have duplicate numbers of some cars I am trying to do something about that. So those things do trouble me.
I do not obsess about whether a given car matches exactly what the ORER says it should be but I do not ignore such issues either. The more I know the more my kind of moderate fussiness tells me what I want to do.
I am aware that others would want me to do more, much more. And some others would regard what little I do as too much.
Dave Nelson
BNSF UP and others modeler The locos are a santa fe sw 7 numbered 2418, and a b and o baldwin s12 numbered 9278 I believe.
Do a search for these 2 locos, and you'll find a picture of the B&O S12, and for the ATSF SW7, what few they had were rebuilt in their San Bernadino shops, given the SSB designation, and renumbered. Some were turned into B units.
http://spazioinwind.libero.it/cajon/roster/sfdiesel.htm
You will find pictures of the SSB's on your search.
When your trying to determine if a model is close to the prototype, you have to do some searching around.
Except for the "wide hood" issue with GPs and SDs manufactured before about 1990, all Athearn BB stuff are reasonably accurate versions of real equipment. By recent standards, they're by no means "state of the art" (cast on grab irons and ladders on freight cars, simplified / generic detailing on locomotives for example) but in recent years the decoration has vastly improved and is as good as any other company.
They do tend to do "one size fits all" however. For example, IIRC their 40' wood reefer is based on a Pacific Fruit Express car, and their 50' double-door steel boxcar is based on a Union Pacific car. These models have been issued in dozens of different railroad paint schemes - sometimes the original prototype is pretty close to what that railroad had, sometimes not.
BTW same goes for the old MDC/Roundhouse line that is now owned by Athearn. It's a little jumbled as some Athearn BB cars have moved over to the Roundhouse brand name.
All right, all right. :) The locos are a santa fe sw 7 numbered 2418, and a b and o baldwin s12 numbered 9278 I believe. I can tell you a bit about the cars too, but you only mention locos
I think Athearn is generally prototypical, locomotives and cars. Their locos have been accused of the hoods being too wide, and the reason was to fit the flat side motors they used, but I think most of that was early models, and they were sota of "generic", and not a railroad company specific, in design, except maybe in the lettering and painting.
There are a lot of "rivet counters" that will argue, but overall I think they are, and were, good, and their new stuff, like the current RTR is better, much better.
I have many BB (blue box) locos and cars, and I'm happy. I have detail the locos to be more railroad specific, but I'm happy with anything Athearn, that I have, and run on my trains.
Others opinions may very.
Your gonna hate this answer. But I'm going to give it anyways -
It depends.
What are your models, and what are they supposed to replicate?
If it's a SP, ATSF, UP switcher, it has a spectacular chance at being very close, even exact with some detailing.
If it's a model representing a rebuilt in 2218 (yes, 200 years future) solar powered rocket boosted switcher XK-9000WJ from the Inter Stellar Express, it won't exactly be realistic...
To give a better answer, we need details. Like, what models do you have? The SW1200? A MP15? A S1? A road switcher, like the GP-35?
But without knowing what your models even are, the best answer I can give you, is the one you will hate - It depends.
Ricky W.
HO scale Proto-freelancer.
My Railroad rules:
1: It's my railroad, my rules.
2: It's for having fun and enjoyment.
3: Any objections, consult above rules.
I am sitting on the fence for this one: I have couple of athearn BB switcher locos and a handfull of assembled rolling stock. The question is, did athearn design them to be prototypical at all, or are they more of a fun kit with real road names? If they are not realistic, I might sell them, but at the least, I will be disappionted that I invested kadee couplers, time, etc into them.