The latest Athearn SD70xxx locos are beginning to arrive. Is the quality of these models better than past releases of SD70xxx with various problems such as trucks, etc.? How is their pulling ability?
Very early, but one person reported placing his locomotive on the shiny flat counter first thing to check the trucks. They were fine.
Crandell
The first set they came out with had problems with warped trucks. I purchased two of them at different times, one of them being the MP heritage unit, and I ended up having to have Athearn send me new trucks for both loco's. The guy I talked to at Athearn said the problem came from the factory. Apparently when the assembler is installing the electrical contacts in the truck if they press them in to hard they can become bent and in turn cause the truck to have a warped appearance or at least that's the way I interpreted what he said. I asked him if this was going to continue and he said they had fixed the problem and this new run would not give people trouble. It wasn't very hard to put the new trucks in its just the fact that when you spend $200 on something you expect it to work right. I won't buy MTH because I had one of there SD70ACe's and it doesn't play well with my other stuff so I will still by the Athearn before I buy one from MTH. They are great pullers and the Tsunami is an excellent decoder if you go with the sound version.