Walthers Bethgons

[Anonymous]

I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has the coal hauling bethgons by Walthers, Good features, Bad features whatever, and your personal assesment of them, Honest, Candid replys welcome, Thanks.


Mac

[Anonymous]

Bump.


Mac

[Anonymous]

good features: they are the cheapest on the market and they run pretty well

bad features: details arent 100% prototypical for all roads(but neither are Athearn or LBF), dummy couplers on the older runs(not really a bad feature if you only run unit trains and dont break the train up for loading or unloading), no interior braces like the real thing(LBF and Athearn have them). 33" plastic wheels....should have 36". not very many different numbers available. sometimes 6, sometimes 12(you can get up to 120 different car numbers with LBF. dont know about Athearn, but i think they only have 6-12 different numbers).


overall, i really like them. i have a 60 car train right now. i had 2 other 60 car trains, but i sold them. they are the best way to go if you want to run long trains because you can usually find them for 45-50 dollars for a 6 pack. LBF and Athearn run 15-20 dollars a car.

[Anonymous]

forgot to mention. the best coal cars out there are the Atlas Coalveyors. they are a bit more expensive, but they are pretty much 100% prototypical and the detail is simply awesome. and you can get lots of differend numbers for running a long train.

[Anonymous]

Thanks a lot NightCrawler, That helps me have a better understanding of the available Bethgon models, what brand of metal 36" wheelsets do you use, or recommend for these cars? Again, Thank you very much for your information, I appreciate it very much.


Mac

[cacole]

With Atlas, you don't need to change the wheelsets because they already use metal.

In my opinion, the best replacement wheelsets are LBF. I have tried them all -- Atlas, Kato, Kadee, and P2K, and the LBF look better and roll better than any of these -- even in Kadee trucks! I have gone through all of my rolling stock and used LBF wheelsets exclusively on everything that did not already have Atlas, Kato, or P2K. Every Kadee wheelset was replaced with LBF.