That was my original intent.... I think I'll fix it up with couplers and give it to my 4 year old grandson. he is as much of a train nut as I am...... I am having to build his own layout...... with his help of course.....
It will fit on his layout just fine...
You could do like the Rock Island did. Take the motor out and use it as a RPO-coach car. Thats what I did with mine.
NWSL makes (or made) a powered truck with motor connected that you can use to repower their RDC. I bought one years ago but never got around to using it.
blownout cylinder ... I'm wondering whether Athearn did this as a means of cutting corners? It sure sounds,reads like it...
... I'm wondering whether Athearn did this as a means of cutting corners? It sure sounds,reads like it...
When I started in the hobby in the early 60s all the Athern diesels were rubber band drive; I think the geared ones came in the late 60s. I was disappointed to see the 're-issued' Athern RDCs still had the rubber band drive; I had hoped for something better after all this time.
I also had a runner band Hustler. I liked to take one band off the motor to make it go faster; it would start slow then go so fast it would fly off 18" radius curves.
George In Midcoast Maine, 'bout halfway up the Rockland branch
Just FYI: If you have the Atheanr and aren't too much of a stickler on length, then go ahead and use the dummy. You might be able to sandwhich it between two protos. There's just no point to wasting the money you spent on the Athearn.
-Morgan
Thank you everybody for all the good answers and good info. I'll not only stick with the Proto 1000's for my RDC I'l get them from trainworld. I paid a bit more for mine.
Happy Thanksgiving to all
I have one of the rubber-band Hustler's and I seem to remember it running and pulling quite substantially. Since none of my audio cassettes play any more (especially the XDR and Chrome ones) hats of to O'l Irv once again. Now what box did I put that one in.....
Mine doesn't move.......it's at the station!!!
"Way back in the good old days" when you bought a kit, Athearn, MDC, or whatever, you were thrilled to have it run OK wirh less than 1/2 hour of "tweaking"!! - and even a week of evenings "fooling around" with it was the norm!! Today, everything has to run PERFECT right out of the box!! Everyone should build a few kits when they start in the hobby - that would eliminate some of the common questions/problems asked about on the forum!! I made my first wife change a tire on the car before I would take her for her driver's liscense!! (Wonder if that's why we're divorced?)
Remember the ERNST gearing set for the rdc's? I tried one, that was the longest spline drive i ever saw. It worked better than the rubber band but that big open frame motor still made it impossible to run decently. I believe it's still in the scrap box.
Railphotog The rubber band drive in the Athearn RDCs was not unique in their line. They had GP-7's, F-7's and the four wheeled Hustler, maybe more with the rubber band drive. Their rotary snow plows' blade turned this way too.
The rubber band drive in the Athearn RDCs was not unique in their line. They had GP-7's, F-7's and the four wheeled Hustler, maybe more with the rubber band drive. Their rotary snow plows' blade turned this way too.
I have 6 or 7 of the old rotary's. I even have an article about "motorizing" them. I must have spent 50 or 100 hours trying to get one of them to work. Finally loaded one with fishing sinkers and got it to work!! Only one problem - needed 3 locos to push the _**& thing!!
Before their plastic RDCs, Athearn offered in the early 1950's metal bodied ones, with powered trucks. They too were the shorter length, and included the RDC-4, which was actually short in the prototype. They were fairly crude, with white metal ends and the "hump" on the roof, and the power truck was pretty noisy. I have several of them I bought many years ago mostly out of curiosity as I'd done a lot of modeling with the plastic versions.
Don't know if they still have them, but Trainworld was offering Life Like RDC-2 and -3's for $19.95, and the -1 for $29.95. A great deal and a whole lot better than the Athearn models.
Bob Boudreau
CANADA
Visit my model railroad photography website: http://sites.google.com/site/railphotog/
This one shows an old wide-body Athearn GP-9 on the left and a new Proto GP-9 on the right. The wide body at the bottom of the picture in the striped shirt belongs to yours truly.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
The real RDC-1 (all coach), -2 (coach & baggage), -3 (RPO, coach & baggage), & -9's (all coach & cab-less) plus the NH's "Roger Williams" (A-units had diesel-like cabs, B-units were square-ended) were 85' long. The rare RDC-4 (baggage & RPO, no passengers) was 72' long.
There has been a long, long tradition in this hobby to make short passenger cars to make tight curves. This goes back to original Lionel in 1900. All old Athearn passenger car stock has always been 72' long, and they aren't the only ones in HO. Con-Cor, for example, also makes 72' cars.
The original RDC's from Athearn included the RDC-4, as well as the RDC-1, RDC-2, and RDC-3. It was easy for Athearn to choose to make all RDC's the same length at that point, so they did (based on the RDC-4). Nowadays, folks prefer more to-scale models, which led to the P1K RDC's being 85' long and the death of Athearn RDC's. Athearn has said that the RDC molds broke, and that they will no longer be made. I find that a strange coincidence.
wjstix,Generally speaking, passenger cars were/are 85' long, more or less. The NH's stainless steel fleet was unusual in that they were slightly under 85' (84', IIRC). I can't think of too many 80' cars.
The Athearn heavyweight coach...I'm not certain that the prototype was 72' long. Yes, the bagg and RPO's were short at 72' or so, and I know there were short coaches. But were there any real 72' coaches like the Athearn model?
BTW, the Athearn heavyweight bagg is very close to NH's own, except the NH had only 4-wheel trucks under theirs, not 6 like Athearn.
R. T.,See what happens when you're a smartalec?
At my club, some guys decided to have a speed contest using Athearn RDC's. Who could make the fastest Budd car? Heh. The winner was the one that used some PVC pipe to replace the wire drive shafts and longer/wider rubberbands. From what I've heard, the speed was incredible.
What I always laughed at was the "bouncing" they did when you came to a quick stop.
Ol' Irv was a shrewd businessman. He kept his costs low to keep his prices so low that no one could compete with him. It worked, too. At least until the rise of RTR and the shift of the consumer to quality products.
Paul A. Cutler III*******************Weather Or No Go New Haven*******************
Uncle Irv had a reputation of being a penny-pincher. Long after smaller motors had become available allowing for prototypical hood widths on diesels he persisted for thirty or more years to use the old Globe Models dies instead of recutting them for the narrower hoods. I saw a heads on-tails on view of an Athearn dummy consisted with one of the new Atlas diesels in the mid-70s and I found that foot too-wide hood-width quite striking and obvious.
From the far, far reaches of the wild, wild west I am: rtpoteet
Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry
I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...
http://modeltrainswithmusic.blogspot.ca/
As a sidebar to this subject you may not realize that the Athearn RDCs were rubber-band drive.
I was working in a hobby shop in the early eighties and Uncle Irv made a new production run and a half-dozen or so showed up in the shop. I had never really seen one disassembled although I was familiar with the fact that they had this crazy rubber-band drive so I took the shell off and took a peek. I had just got the beast reassembled when one of our Mr-knowitall customers came waltzing through the front door and came bounding over to the train department.
"Oh," he exclaimed, "I see those new RDCs from Athearn came in."
I set a unit down on the counter and he proceeded to examine it. "They just came in from UPS this morning," I said. "I had the shell off a minute ago. If you'da been here you could have seen the rubber-band drive."
"C'mon!"
I took the shell back off and showed him. "Power of the future," I quipped.
He didn't think it amusing, I guess, because he turned and left the store shaking his head.
I worked there for about another six weeks; I don't remember ever seeing him come in the store again. He may be out there somewhere still thinking that the whole model railroad industry has gone to hell-in-a-handbasket!
Ya the Athearn RDC was introduced in the fifties when many HO'ers were using 18" radius curves - hey, if you had room for broad curves, you would have stayed in O scale - so they made the RDC shorter than it should be to take the sharp curves. Just like their streamlined and several of their heavyweight passenger cars are about 8' shorter than the 80' prototypes.
(The heavyweight RPO, Baggage and Coach from Athearn are full length models of cars that were really 70' or shorter.)
I waited a long time to get an RDC-3 or (two of them). I ordered a Proto 1000 RDC-3 and an Athearn RDC-3 dummy. The Proto 1000 came in first and I was very pleased with it. My plan was to have the proto unint pull the athearn dummy and sinply beef up the athearn unit with some details and weathering right? Well when the Athearn dummy arrived, the dimensions are so different... it's smaller, shorter. Same number of doors and windows..... just shorter and smaller.... I'm sure everyboy else already knew this right? I have just never noticed this with an Athearn product before.... even older stock.