so i made a error and deleted the photo's https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qiSBrcIA7mDUhpdrUmyms8YvacCVadIg/view?usp=drivesdk
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14EY4CE8ctKvV9JmXlF53CdEWOzjR54Yu/view?usp=drivesdk
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qiSBrcIA7mDUhpdrUmyms8YvacCVadIg/view?usp=drivesdk
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Fvd4hNSysOEsmBbIIWdlm_Eqhgqt840J/view?usp=drivesdk
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12HAOZD4Akq8vFhyxcxpLqYq7AXzeLEud/view?usp=drivesdk
so i am haveing some technical difficulties.. i will try to post them.
Oh right... I guess there needs to be evidence for that to happen. here is a small bit of what i did. i have done 6 heavyweights, 6 streamlined. one vearly early one with the brace on the back. i have enough pieces to make one more with the brace on the back. but... i may wait. this took alot of breaks cause it did kinda get frustrating. but i think it turned out good.
doctorwayne But JOSEPH, no peekshurs! How can we cringe wit no peekshurs? Wayne
But JOSEPH, no peekshurs! How can we cringe wit no peekshurs?
Wayne
Rich
Alton Junction
I am probably gonna make some of you cringe, sad or impressed. i apologize in advance for the two. i got several heavyweights and strimlined in blue box. i liked them. when i was younger i never even knew thata they were too short. i am 25 now and have learned a lot. when i got several strealined and a heavyweight RTR i thought cool maybe they fixed the issue with them not being the right length. i own several branchline kits and other smooth side coaches that were the correct length. i own several con-cor that are very nice. but it bugged me that when i put the cars in trains it showed how short they were. so i cut them all and made them the correct length. even the oness that had the braces along the sides. i think they look great. but if you are extremely careful you can do it. or..... just leave them the way they are.
Paul said:
Sheldon,I have a feeling that's not the way those cars in your picture came from the factory. I just put together two bone-stock (so stock, they still have X2F's on them) Athearn heavyweight cars, and the cars are 5.5 scale feet apart at the car corners (without diaphragms). My Walthers heavyweights are more like 2.5 feet apart at the car corners (with diaphragms). At rest, the Walthers diaphragms do touch, but when under tension, the diaphragms are apart by about 1/16". But I could just as easily put on short shank Kadees and they'd touch all the time.
Yes, you are correct, they did not come that way from Athearn or ConCor - they were KITS and I modified them to be that way.
If I had room for 60" curves, and unlimted time and money, maybe all the passenger cars on my layout would be full scale length for their "prototypes".
But I started building my fleet of nearly 200 passenger cars LONG before all this new fancy, high end, expensive RTR stuff existed. And even back then, I decided that I did not care for how 85' cars looked on my 36" radius curves - I have watched passenger cars in real life.
So I made a choice, a compromise, that I am still comfortable with. But I actually enjoy taking that Athearn car, adding a lot of detail, body mounting the couplers, installing the diaphragms to work correctly, kit bashing the window arrangments to get cars Athearn never made, painting them, decaling them, etc - more fun than taking $100 out of a box.......
And for me the "running" part is the same fun, with that Athearn car or a RTR car. Passenger car or freight cars, I gave up on "rivet counting" years ago, even though I'm pretty good at it.
As for the diaphragm spacing o the various brands of new cars, it is all over the map, some are pretty good, other suck big time, I have seen them all.
My cars are built by me to one standard that interchanges fully with all my cars - without regard for length or brand - and I do have a few 80' heavyweights - Branchline, Bachmann, they too have been modified to my coupler/diaphragm standards.
Sheldon
Paul3 richhotrain, If snooty means I prefer accuracy over inaccuracy, then I guess I'm snooty. If it means, "having or showing the insulting attitude of people who think that they are better, smarter, or more important than other people," (from m-w.com) then I'm not. Paul A. Cutler III
richhotrain,
If snooty means I prefer accuracy over inaccuracy, then I guess I'm snooty. If it means, "having or showing the insulting attitude of people who think that they are better, smarter, or more important than other people," (from m-w.com) then I'm not.
Paul A. Cutler III
I meant definition #2.
I just thought that your comments about the Athearn BB cars, the fact that they are shorties, and the thought that they are "true toys....toys for children", were both a bit unfair. I own both Athearn BB shorties and Walthers and Rapido full size cars and both have a place on our fellow modelers layouts. They are certainly not children's toys, especially when modified with metal wheels, Kadee couplers and even working diaphragms.
riogrande5761,Yeah, I know. I "dissed" St. Irv's primitive out-of-scale models. The horror!
While I certainly understand the role of "stand in" models (I use them myself), there are multiple levels of reality between the stand in and the prototype. For example, using a generic sleeper instead of prototypical sleeper isn't so bad. Using a coach instead? Not so good. Using a 72' coach? That's even worse. My point is that not all stand ins are equal. For me, some things are just unacceptable. I personally draw the line at shorty cars. That's Lionel thinking, and I just won't do it.
I know there are people that don't care about certain aspects of our hobby. Heck, I don't much care about freight car accuracy. I couldn't tell you the difference between the various kinds of dreadnaught ends, roof patterns, or even between an AAR 40' box and a PS-1 40' box. I really don't care. However, I do appreciate that other people care. And if someone offered me two models, one being accurate and one being inaccurate, I'll take the accurate model any day. Why? Because this hobby is about modeling the prototype in miniature. Compromises must be made depending on operation, availability and price, of course. Just don't tell me that the compromise is better than the prototype (Hi, Sheldon!).
richhotrain,If snooty means I prefer accuracy over inaccuracy, then I guess I'm snooty. If it means, "having or showing the insulting attitude of people who think that they are better, smarter, or more important than other people," (from m-w.com) then I'm not.
hobo9941 I have some of the streamlined athearn cars. For the money, they are OK. I'm not a rivet counter, but they look good to me. I haven't figured how to put lights in them though.
I have some of the streamlined athearn cars. For the money, they are OK. I'm not a rivet counter, but they look good to me.
I haven't figured how to put lights in them though.
http://imgur.com/a/obSJx
IMO, if you're not expecting Walthers or MTH levels of detail, they're fantastic - cheap, easy to work on, great runners. When I can get my hands on a 3d printer, they'll be easy to add interiors to, too :p
Paul3 Personally, I can't stand shorty cars. To each their own, and all that, but they aren't for me. I bought these as a kid. I got the whole set: F7A-B-B-A, Bagg., RPO, Coach, Diner, Vista Dome, Obs., all in NH paint. I will always associate them with my days of ignorance, when I thought manufacturers wouldn't make fake models ("Authentically Scaled From Railroad Blueprints") and that they'd surely paint them correctly. Ugh. I remember feeling like a fool when I found out the truth. And seeing these shorty cars always brings back that feeling. To my dying day, I will look at these as true toys...toys for children. No matter what angle you look at them, they are always wrong. It's like seeing a 4-axle Blomberg-trucked EF-4 (E-33), or the exploding boxcar, or the missle launching car, etc. They are remnents of our toy train past, and for me they are best left in a museum. The only tolerable cars are the heavyweight baggage and RPO (and maybe the HW coaches, depending on the prototype), because at least they are the right length. Add new trucks and body mount the couplers, and now we're talking about something reasonable. But the rest of the Athearn shorty fleet? Not for me. Oh, I still have my old shorty cars. I keep them as a reminder of how far we've come, this hobby and I. Paul A. Cutler III
Personally, I can't stand shorty cars. To each their own, and all that, but they aren't for me.
I bought these as a kid. I got the whole set: F7A-B-B-A, Bagg., RPO, Coach, Diner, Vista Dome, Obs., all in NH paint. I will always associate them with my days of ignorance, when I thought manufacturers wouldn't make fake models ("Authentically Scaled From Railroad Blueprints") and that they'd surely paint them correctly. Ugh. I remember feeling like a fool when I found out the truth. And seeing these shorty cars always brings back that feeling.
To my dying day, I will look at these as true toys...toys for children. No matter what angle you look at them, they are always wrong. It's like seeing a 4-axle Blomberg-trucked EF-4 (E-33), or the exploding boxcar, or the missle launching car, etc. They are remnents of our toy train past, and for me they are best left in a museum.
The only tolerable cars are the heavyweight baggage and RPO (and maybe the HW coaches, depending on the prototype), because at least they are the right length. Add new trucks and body mount the couplers, and now we're talking about something reasonable. But the rest of the Athearn shorty fleet? Not for me. Oh, I still have my old shorty cars. I keep them as a reminder of how far we've come, this hobby and I.
But of course those 18" scale gaps between the diaphragms on those expensive exact scale cars are perfectly acceptable?
I like my passenger cars coupled like this:
I agree with what everyone has said, so far!
They are short.
They are solid.
They are a good value.
They are good for tight radius curves.
They are generic rather than specific.
They are nice looking but don't sport state-of-the-art detail.
In short, the trade-offs and value equation is in the eye of the beholder!
e.g. does the overhang on curves bother you more than the short length?
Do you want to run a 10 car train of "shorties" or a 8 train of 85 footers?
Do you have a budget for new Rapido or train-show BB Athearn?
Personally, they don't fit what I'm trying to do but I know a few serious, sophisticated modelers who run them.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
that moron who upon gazing at my Dad's layout, the result of almost 20 years of work, commented that a "real" model railroader could tell him everything that was "wrong" with it.
Basically what you are describing isn't an "expert" but a guest with no manners and as such should be shown to the door with all due hast.
Where would we be without the "experts" to keep the rest of us on track eh?
What is an expert? Someone who has accurate knowledge or someone who disagree's with your way of doing things and doesn't have the manners to be graceful about how to use that knowledge? Some people just don't have social graces or manners is what it boils down to honestly.
Uh oh Paul, don't "poke the bear"! I too had shorty Athearn streamline cars back when I was a teenager, and thought they looked really nice at the time. Mine were the SP Daylight pained cars. They were sold off by the time I was in college. In my mid twenties, as I became drawn to particular prototypes, I began to be much more aware of the differences or short comings in many plastic models. You see, I tended to noticed the differences ever since reading the "eye spy" type features in the High Lights childrens magazines, so that transferred to trains and especially in the 1970's and 1980's it didn't take too long to notice that there were very few models availalbe in plastic that came anywhere close to real train cars.
Even now with many more accurate models on the market from Walthers, BLI and others, it is still difficult to be accurate with all cars or to have a train that looks exactly like the real thing so most of us still have to accept models as "stand-in" that look kinda close to the real thing but isn't an exact match. That is especially true for folks trying to model the Southern Pacific in the 1960's passenger trains!
But not everyone cares that much about having our toy trains look like the real thing, as long as they have the generic look - some are happy as pigs in a stye. Ultimately we have to choose how to enjoy the hobby and try to tolerate those who enjoy it differently. If we don't, we view others as the "experts" and laugh at them or consider them an enemy of sorts, which really doesn't do anyone any good.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
The older Athearn blue box passenger cars were solid. They had the great benefit of going around 18 inch curves without a hitch. The streamline cars look a bit short to my eye, but if you don't consist them with the real long cars they look OK and they stay on the track. I like the heavyweight Athearns, they look very good and just like what we rode in back in the day.
David Starr www.newsnorthwoods.blogspot.com
This is gold info. Athearn's streamliners can be rebuilt and detailed into a pseudo Super Chief for those of us who cant afford the Walthers version.
Sheldon, you are priceless!! That last comment got me to laughing so hard I almost "wet" myself!!!
Ah yes..........."experts", someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything there is to know about nothing!!
If he hadn't died I would send you that moron who upon gazing at my Dad's layout, the result of almost 20 years of work, commented that a "real" model railroader could tell him everything that was "wrong" with it.
Keep doing what you're doing now because I suspect you're actually doing it right!!!
Mark
G Paine Are the Athearn RTR passenger cars the same as what used to be the blue box line? The reason I am asking is if they can easily be taken apart, stripped and repainted as I had been doing with blue box undecorateds? For instance is the window glass glued in or can it just be popped out like on blue boxs?
Are the Athearn RTR passenger cars the same as what used to be the blue box line? The reason I am asking is if they can easily be taken apart, stripped and repainted as I had been doing with blue box undecorateds? For instance is the window glass glued in or can it just be popped out like on blue boxs?
They are the Blue Box cars, but I would not be surprised if the windows are glued. I know they glue the roofs down on the Roundhouse cars. You should hoever be able to ge the athearn's apart.
-Morgan
Almost the entire fleet of passenger cars on the ATLANTIC CENTRAL is Athearn, streamliners and heavyweights, and ConCor shorty streamliners.
I love the selectively compressed length and add lots of details to all of them. As well as close coupling and American Limited working diaphragms - that touch and STAY touching all the time. The effect is great, better than $50 "scale" cars going down the track with 1/8" to 1/4" gaps between the diaphragms.
Most of my passenger power is PA1's, and EMD F or FP units, but I do have a few E units and I think they look just fine.
Remember, OK, very few streamlined cars where shorter than 80', but MANY heavyweights ranged from 60' to 80' and everywhere in between.
And, I have kitbashed lot of cars never offered by Athearn, combines, full RPO's, solarium observations, dome observations, etc.
But what do I know, according to all the experts, I'm doing this train thing all wrong.
I have to second running F units in front of the shorties. I don't have any Athearn's but I do have some Con Cor shorties and they don't look good with E's or Erie Built.
I won't give the praise to the Con Cor cars has the Athearn's have received in this post. But, with a little weight, Kadee couplers, Metal wheel sets and tinkering my Con Cor track great now. Plus they are cheap, I have $169.10 invested in 10 cars, 1 pair of new trucks, couplers and little people.
Cuda Ken
I hate Rust
George In Midcoast Maine, 'bout halfway up the Rockland branch
Just don't run them behind E8's and they won't look nearly as short, use the Athearn F units and they'll all fit together nicely.
Agreed, not 100% correct but for operational smoothness and low cost they're like a broken drum, hard to beat !!!!
The Athearn cars are 'close' to some ATSF prototypes, but are shorter for the most part. They do NOT have Budd roofs or ends and really are best described as 'generic'. The 60' RPO is the the closest. They do have fluting, but the trademark pair of large ribs for a Budd car are not present. I added Evergreen 'ribs' to make a quasi CB&Q car back around 1970. I later picked up some of the Mantua metal cars(also 72') that had the correct roof(or at least close) profile. Later the IHC & Walthers cars became available.
As others have mentioned, they do 'track' quite well. I built a Rock Island 'Plainsman' for a friend using 4 of their cars. It ran for years, until he passed away and the cars were sold.
Jim
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
Travis Malek Yeah, the reason I wont some is cuz they r cheap, I run 22" curves and I love UP. And most of the feedback i have gotte nis positive, so i mite go ahead and get them. Thanks, Travis.
Yeah, the reason I wont some is cuz they r cheap, I run 22" curves and I love UP. And most of the feedback i have gotte nis positive, so i mite go ahead and get them. Thanks, Travis.
I have Athearn streamlined pennsy cars, the blue box ones, they are perfect. I don't think you can go wrong with these cars, they have weight, run great on 22" radius, I've installed Kadee's on mine and they stay hitched together nicely.
For semi scale passenger cars, these are the best on the market. Affordable and very detailed.
Travis Malek Hey, I am modeling the late 60's and 70's and I was wondering if the Athearn Streamlined cars are of good quality, They may not be the best, but for the price, I think I should get them. Has anybody owned or see these cars? Are they good on detail? Thanks, Travis
Hey, I am modeling the late 60's and 70's and I was wondering if the Athearn Streamlined cars are of good quality, They may not be the best, but for the price, I think I should get them. Has anybody owned or see these cars? Are they good on detail? Thanks, Travis
They are excellent. Get some. I love mine.