Just bought my last Athearn locomotive.....

[Anonymous]

Athearn is definitly better than Bachmann. Athearn's quality control is much, much better. The reason i say that is now everyone think they can get a good DCC engine for $30 (bachmann gp40's) Well i think for a DCC engine you ought to spend at least $100. The DCC-ready Athearn RTR are a bargan for $65

[Anonymous]

Well I didn't think that I would generate that much interest in this subject! This is good stuff! Just getting back into the hobby after an absence of about 6 years. Wow how time flies. Been wanting to purchase "kits" but everything out there for the most part is RTR. MR and RMC mags have ton's of ads, reviews, ect. But it's all about how nice the RTR stuff is. This is not a bad thing, but I hope that manufactures don't stop making kits. I like building stuff. That way I can stretch my modeling dollar way out. Now granted as I said i have a lot of Athearn loco's, (I actually counted 29 athearn, the rest are Spectrum. Proto 2000, Bachman Plus, Mantua, and Rivarossi)and yes the others run exceptionally well, but the point I wanted to make is that the old BB stuff as far as I can see is Bullet proof. It requires tinkering to make them run well. They all run good.
Derailments are not an issue. Wheels out of guage will cause most of that on it's own.
Maybe I'm an old timer, 42 this year! and my old railroad club buddies are older than I am!!!. HA ha. Don't get to the point of being a "Rivet counter" and you will find that this is a pretty good hobby to be in! Have fun!!

[Ballantrae Road]

Being new to the hobby I didn't really know what was what concerning quality. So my first loco a few months ago was an Athearn Genesis unnumbered CN SD75I. It ran good. Lots of details to add on though. Just a few days ago I took it out and drilled out the dummy ditch lights and added working lights. Had to use my Dremel and pin vise quite a bit. Recently I discovered P2k's. Since they made a lot of shortline Locos I bought some. These are very good. Excellent details. Will still buy these. However I just ordered and received an Atlas Dash 8-40B. Now this one is really good. Excellent details , pulls like a Bulldozer. Haven't bought a Kato yet but that will come. Basically you get what you pay for. The BB's are good for me to learn on. I bought an AC4400 Dummy and mounted the shell of a CP on it and painted and added all the details. It was good experience. However the Athearns do have a problem staying on the rails. I think the trucks are poor quality. I will fix this problem one day. Anyways this is a hobby. We all have our opinions, likes and dislikes. We make mistakes and learn from them. Wish I would have started when I was a lot younger (56 now). Looking forward to retirement in the next few years to enjoy it more.

[Anonymous]

maybe i should have said i don't care much about detail and that's why i like B-B -but the detailing on the new RTR's is good

[ICRR1964]

I've always been a BB fan for years, I still have about a 100 of these that I use on a regular runners. I also have allot of P2K's, Atlas, and Spectrum loco's and am happy with them to. There are allot of people that walk away from the BB Athearns because they get tired of the adding details and putting them together. These are great runners, but require some work to make them look as good as the RTR and super detailed units. I guess I will always have them around, but am thinnning out some buy selling them on Ebay this winter.

[CP5415]

QUOTE: Originally posted by dharmon

I guess if I wasn't serious about being a modeler, I'd just buy Kato's and Brass.

Thankyou!

Gordon

[BRAKIE]

Matt,,I started hearing about the P2K problems on the Atlas forums..Life Like really blew it on the GP38-2..The GP38-2 was so bad they had to pu***he release date back in order to fix the goofs starting with the spacing of the fans.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by dingoix
If anybody has a running Athearn you want to get rid of (for free) , let me know

Hey I just made that offer. [:D] But I am accepting any and all athearn though.

James

[Anonymous]

i like the old B-B's too. I've seen NIB B-B GP38-2's for $22 and used SD40-2' s for $20-25 They will run forever-- trainboyH16-44, your AC4400 probobly had warped trucks- if anybody has a running Athearn you want to get rid of (for free) , let me know

[Anonymous]

There seems to be alot of unwanted and neglected Athearn Locomotives out there. Since I am an athearn blue box deciple.

Please I implore you. Don't send them to the scrap heap. Send them to me instead. I will give them a nice and loving home. I will also accept any other donations you would like to make to my cause.

Email me if you have any to send.

James

[trainboyH16-44]

Hard place to live, eh?
I bought my last Athearn engine 3 years ago next week. It was an AC4400 that very quickly ended up in the scra heap for derailing every single round of the layout at lesat 5 times. Now you may think this could be bad trackwork, but the Kato SD90 could go over all these spots with no trouble. I have also retired my 2 SD40s with the arrival of four equivlent katos on the property. The AB set of F units was replaced 4 years ago by an ABA set of C-Liners. The SW1200s have been replaced by a P2K S-3 and several P2K Geeps.
I think I'm covered..

[BRAKIE]

I can not help but wonder how many of those that say they will no longer buy Athearn will? I also wonder how many that say no more Athearn for them whines the loudest about the high prices?


Overdurff, No engine or car escapes brutalizing on the Atlas forum.[:0]

[Anonymous]

i think Athearn is very good for the price. Athearn is about the only one who make the engines i want. I like the RTR's new improved driveline. It's much quieter than B-B. From what i can tell from picures I like the detailing on Athearn RTR DASH 9 much better than the Kato DASH 9. I will say the warped truckes were quite a problem (i never had one w/ warped trucks)

[Anonymous]

I was reading a "review " of the Alco RS2 by Athearn (MDC?) on the Atlas Forum that in general was very favorable which was followed by three pages of discussion about the lack of scale size of the cab windows on all RS2s and RS3s on the market, Athearn, Atlas ad infinitium. The basic problem is that the product in the box does not match 1:1 products manufactured by Alco and modified for or by the various rail roads.
My point is that the devil is in the details, which each of us must learn to live with or exercise modeling skills and extra details to match Locomotive A for Railroad B on date C. If you expect Atlas, Kato, BLI or Athearn to "get it right" for all three of the As,Bs, and Cs then Mitch and Boan that the detail is not right for your date which is not the Date "C" they picked. I remember the evolution that the Athearn drives have gone through from rubber band drives to the new drive train and the "miraculous" addition of fly wheels that brought about a reliable performing line of locomotives. The market continues to move forward and evolve. Let's hope that the industry works out their quirks (split gears, wide hoods, scale operating couplers) and possibly addresses the mounting of what has become the "standard" coupler. If only we had fly wheel equiped, kaydee couplered, realistic toilet flush sound units available. IF ONLY...............
Will

[RMax1]

I bought a few Athearn F7 shells off Ebay for $1 a piece to play with. Had a can of Ferrari red gloss paint and sprayed one of them. Looked a little crazy so I set it aside. A few weeks later I was play around with a black marks a lot. HMMmmmm.,,, so I took the black marker to the top of the Ferrari red shell. Then I sprayed it with dullcoat. Hey that looks kinda like an old KATY F! Then I went on the quest for details and decals to fini***he shell. It took months to find the n scale decal to use for the nose of the loco. I could not find one in HO. Everywhere I called or looked did not have one. I just got the decoder for the chassis. So I figure the $1 shell will turn out to cost me close to $75 when it is all said and done but no one else will have a KATY F like this one. The detail parts are expensive but this unit I have made almost from scratch.

RMax1

[cwclark]

gee...this post is a blast from the past!...LOL...the new athearn stuff is getting better than the BB stuff but they still have a long way to go when it comes to the detailing...I just got my first Atlas locomotive a couple of weeks ago...i think so far these are the best when it comes to the details...chuck

[railroadyoshi]

First, you get what you pay for. The value will and should come out about the same if you wi***o detail it up.

Second, $26? I usually see them going around $5 to $10. IMHO you paid too much.

[Anonymous]

I think the basic problem with the Athearn BB is that it hasn't moved with the times. You can now buy sweeter-running locos, often with finer detail, for the same price if not less. Take a look at Bachmann's GP40, for example - it's a smooth runner, a lot quieter than a BB, and has much nicer handrails. Other detail is about the same as a BB but I'm more inclined to work on these due to the couplers already being body mounted and the better drivetrain. Arguably they're not as tough as the BB but I've had one cruising around for a few months on a test track now and there's been no noticable problems - if anything it's improving. If Athearn were to improve the truck gearing, change to the single-piece driveshafts, and add decent handrails, they'd have a fine product, but at the moment they're lagging behind.

[Anonymous]

Athearns are an ok Model,For Display!
Allan.

[simon1966]

Nelsonb, welcome to the forum! You sure dug deep to find this thread! You make a very valid point. I find it interesting that with my own approach to the hobby, I have a very different outlook when it comes to different aspects. For example, I would never dream of buying a R to R freight car, or a prebuilt structure. In fact my very favorite structures are wooden laser kits that require hours of work. But when it come to the locomotives I have only purchased R to R with the exception of a few Athearn Blue Boxes early on.

[Anonymous]

All of you that buy or have bought an athearn locomotive are forgetting 1 very important thing, the shake the box kits are still the best value for the money. I mean $26 for the initial expense is not bad! Now granted the Atlas, Proto 2000, and other RTR brands out there are great and run spectacular, but are you forgetting that this is MODELING!
Most of the enjoyment about this hobby is TINKERING WITH STUFF! I have over 38 Athearn locos in my roster, all in various stages of repair, upgrade, tune up, and running
on my layout. Just don't want everybody to forget what they are about.

[dharmon]

I guess if I wasn't serious about being a modeler, I'd just buy Kato's and Brass.

[3railguy]

I think Athearn blue box engines have a place in the hobby. If you're not real serious about detailing, precision running qualities, and don't want to spend a lot of money, they are fine I think. They are reliable and have fairly accurate proportions. I agree that it may not be worth the trouble super detailing them. You may as well spend the money on the higher end diesels.

Think Athearn diesel handrail stancions are a pain? Wait till you install hand rail stancions on the boiler of a Kato N scale mikado. I just did one last week and it makes Athearn diesel stancions a picnic. Magnifier lamp, tweezers, and a whole lot of patience. I had to put a cardboard tent around my work table because they liked to catapult off the tweezers as I was pressing them in.

[Dave553]

I too have bought my last Athearn blue box unit. The clunky metal handrails are hardly any better than they were years ago when you had to bend the top around the rail, and they look awful compared to almost anything else. The last straw was when the nearly-invisible sand fillers (all 3 of them) on a C44-9W flew out of the tweezers into a parallel universe after my futile attempts to force them into apparently smaller and different-shaped holes. I just finished assembling 2 Kato units complete with about a million grabirons, all of which fit perfectly; they look better and run infinitely better too. As someone mentioned above, it's hard to believe they're still making those old models with the too-wide body. I'll NEVER buy another one.

Dave

[trainfan1221]

This is something else to read. Now when I was beginning modelling in the late 70's and my friend was also, we heard that Athearn was the absolute best you could buy. They were heralded as top of the line. I had several, and never had any trouble with the motors as some people seem to have, though a couple of models didn't always hold up. I recall the Trainmaster model I had falling apart, don't even remember running it for too long before it broke down. I had little trouble with the noise problem discussed on another thread, I liked the way they sounded. I guess with so much better stuff nowadays, these models could be considered inferior. My biggest problem with them, that seemed to be overlooked by most everybody,was the waaaayyyyy too wide hood that threw details off. Most notably the front end of their EMD models, (GP35,SD45) which to this day I think look horrible. I remember making vain attempts to make the windows smaller just to make it look halfway normal. This technique worked better on GE models however. Athearn's modern freight cars look really nice,especially the wheels. Since I am now in n scale, these models are not a big factor with me. I don't know about their n locos yet, but their Auto-Max car, which I own, is a good model.

[Anonymous]

Some people can't read, it seems.

They get so carried away with their "My Atherarn, right or wrong" mindset that they read things into statements that are not there. NO ONE ever said that people who have Athearns are not "real" modelers.

I suggest you re-read my statements (including the one where I make this point clear).

I clearly state that by "graduating", I mean that Athearns no longer meet my needs. I desire more detailed and better running locos, and quite frankly Athearn blue box locos do not fit this criteria, IMHO.

I have the right to express my dislike of Athearn products, as others have the right to express their like of the same products. If the "Athearn mafia" here doesn't think so, then maybe the forum moderator should be brought in. If he agrees that I can't express my likes/dislikes on this forum, I will happily go elsewhere.


PS

One third of my fleet are Athearns. But after going thu this thread, I will NEVER buy an Athearn product again.

[cwclark]

So now that wev'e beaten this subject to death, on to another BB Athearn problem...some 8 years ago I put together an SP daylight passenger train...so, I decide to pull the consist with a black widow A/B F-7 unit(s)...I painstakingly painted them both and put on the decals...the train always ran ok but a bit slow..I also noticed a funny smell coming from the B unit..i didn't pay it much mind because it was the smell of gear oil that gets on the motors once in awhile to make that unique smell..well anyway..i decided to give the pair a good cleaning the other day and when i opened the gearbox on the B unit what do you think i found?...it was an extra spare part motor armature brush (you know..that small round cylindrical thing that rubs against the motor to cause the power to run the motor) that had fallen into the bolster truck gears during assembly at the factory and it had broken a tooth on the middle gear...Athearn is really good at sending me spare parts but i wi***hey didn't put it in the gear box...good thing i have a collection of old athearn gears to replace the broken one caused by the spare part ...doesn't anyone at Athearn inspect thir stuff before they ship it?...I don't know guys..i used to swear by Athearn but i'm really getting some really serious cold feet when it comes to purchasing another Athearn locomotive...Chuck

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Typan

QUOTE: Originally posted by BNSF railfan.

QUOTE: Originally posted by CP5415

Just bought my latest Athearn BB.
My first U-boat. I've never been a U-boat fan. Then again I wasn't a GE fan until i saw my first AC4400 hauling an intermodal train for the CPR! [:D]
It's an ugly locomotive, Especially in Missouri Pacific livery
But the price was decent so I couldn't turn it down.

Gordon

Sucker.......LOL![:D] There not as ugly as the SD70ACe's. BNSFrailfan.

Hi BNSF Railfan, I know the SD 70ACe is Ugly, thats y i like it so much, put a BNSF on the side and Thats a thing of perfection. LOL

Ya you would too...........

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by BNSF railfan.

QUOTE: Originally posted by CP5415

Just bought my latest Athearn BB.
My first U-boat. I've never been a U-boat fan. Then again I wasn't a GE fan until i saw my first AC4400 hauling an intermodal train for the CPR! [:D]
It's an ugly locomotive, Especially in Missouri Pacific livery
But the price was decent so I couldn't turn it down.

Gordon

Sucker.......LOL![:D] There not as ugly as the SD70ACe's. BNSFrailfan.

Hi BNSF Railfan, I know the SD 70ACe is Ugly, thats y i like it so much, put a BNSF on the side and Thats a thing of perfection. LOL