Athearn SD70 question

[Anonymous]

Anybody have the Athearn SD70? How does it run? Any trouble with it?

Thanks!

[cacole]

I have two of the Athearn Illinois Central SD-70 models.

Problems with them are due primarily to the lack of front-to-rear and side-to-side free play in the front trucks, which cause them to derail if your track has the slightest dip or rise on a curve.

Installing DCC decoders is easy if you pay extra to get the "plug-and-play" type that replaces the constant lighting board, such as the North Coast Engineering DASR decoder sold by Tony's Train Exchange. This decoder is also used in Atlas and Kato models.

One thing that was not clear in the Athearn documentation or the decoder instructions concerns the light bulbs used by Athearn. The decoder documentation mentions that "some locomotive manufacturers include only 1.5 Volt bulbs," and recommends that these bulbs be replaced with 12-14 Volt bulbs. The problem is that 12-14 Volt bulbs are much larger than the Athearn 1.5 Volt bulbs, so replacing them is difficult, especially the ditch lights.

None of the documentation mentions the current draw of the Athearn 1.5 Volt bulbs, or that in some cases two bulbs are wired in series, doubling the current draw. This makes it difficult to compute the value of resistors needed for the bulbs if you don't want to go to the trouble of disassembling the locomotive and replacing the bulbs. I burned out a couple of bulbs and had to replace them.

Overall, the models run very smoothly, and are comparable to an Atlas, Kato, or Proto 2000 in running qualities. If you have good trackwork, you should have no problems at all with them.

[Pennsy58]

I have one and have been very impressed with the detail level and smoothness of the motor. Like the cab interior. Definately a huge step above the blue box line. I too had all kinds of trouble with the lights when converting to DCC. Athearn even sent me a new set of ditch lights no charge, even though the blow out was my fault. I finally gave up and replaced the ditch lights with other ones. Quite a challenge to run the wires though.
Never experienced derail problems but my curves are 22-26 degrees in most places. On tighter curves I run it slow around them and the engine stays on track.

This one gets my recommendation...