Dummy Locos

[guegold]

I've been wondering why no one produces "dummy" locos like we used to get from Athearn?  Most of our trains on modest sized layouts don't need two powered locos to pull the length of trains we run.  They also seem to be a good place to more easily install DCC and sound equipment.

Thanks!

Bill

[Rastafarr]

Broadway Limited sells dummy b-units, both in a-b sets and individually. Maybe not exactly what you're after, but it's something at least.

Stu

[Mark R.]

Would you pay $100 for a dummy engine ?

The only things that would be removed would be the motor, truck gears and drive line shafts. Probably about $10 worth of parts or less to the manufacturer. The big cost in todays engines is all that fine detail we've all demanded in our engines - which would all still be there in a like dummy engine.

Plain and simple - nobody would pay that kind of money for an engine that doesn't run.

Mark.

[willy6]

I got a couple of old BB Athearn locos i found at a train show which i will strip to make dummies.

[dbduck]

I have a few dummys as well..Athearn factory ones as well as a few stripped down ones & even an old Tyco that looked good but ran bad...LOL

[dbduck]

Mark R.

Would you pay $100 for a dummy engine ?

The only things that would be removed would be the motor, truck gears and drive line shafts. Probably about $10 worth of parts or less to the manufacturer. The big cost in todays engines is all that fine detail we've all demanded in our engines - which would all still be there in a like dummy engine.

Plain and simple - nobody would pay that kind of money for an engine that doesn't run.

Mark.

so true..so why not pay the difference & get something that will earn its pay?

[BroadwayLion]

1) Even short trains run better with two locomotives.

2) Every railroad (model or otherwise) had dead locomotives around that can be turned into dummies (or slugs or cabbage cars).

You can always put your sound in a box car, tender, combine or other such piece of equipment.

LIONS are different, all of his ABA and ABBA locomotives are tied together with draw bars and are hard wired across all of the units. Yes there ar dummies in those sets, but then they are the old Atheran units.

LION now runs only subway trains, and these are lashed together with draw bars in six car sets, some with one power car some with two. Him had to build a special 4' long tool for lifting and moving these trains from the bench to the layout. But him is happy with what he has built.

ROAR

[joe323]

DCC has largely eliminated the need for dummies Why buy an empty shell when you can have a working one?

[sandusky]

We needed dummies before DCC how?

M

[dknelson]

sandusky

We needed dummies before DCC how?

M

 

Which opens the topic of when dummy engines first appeared on the model railroad scene.  I know the very first versions of what became the classic Athearn F7 was marketed by "Globe" and sold for an absurdly low price.  It was unpowered and, while painted, was not painted to a railroad paint scheme nor was it lettered.  I remember seeing some painted gold for example.  The only add on detail I can recall was the horns and perhaps the number boards. 

The underframe was rudimentary and the entire engine was feather weight.

it did not take long for power chassis to be offered from Hobbytown and others.   And Walthers credits their survival as a model railroad firm to the incredible demand for decals and paint that followed the introduction of the Globe F unit.

 

That body casting satisfied modelers for years until some guys started to point out that the roof contour was wrong, the steam boiler details and shaped end of the roof line were not suited to all prototypes, that the engine replicated a certain "phase" of F7 production (some guys insisted it was closer to later phases of the F3 or F5) and so on 

 

I agree with the posters above that if you want a dummy engine for its cheapness then you probably need to go back to the era when we were either very easily satisfied, or very unaware of prototype fidelity.   For those who are happy to tolerate "good enough" or "close enough," a rich array of models produced in prior eras awaits you at nearly any swap meet.  Some older trainset  engines ran poorly enough that they are actually improved by "dummy-fying" them.

 

So was that Globe F7 the first dummy for commercial sale? 

 

Dave Nelson

[pastorbob]

Well, in the 50 years I have been in HO, I have used dummies for a couple of reasons.  First, I like loco consists with several units on my freight trains, and I do have the space to run long trains, and I see no purpose to have more than two powered units in a consist, but will often run 2 dummy units with the two powered.  My dummies are units that have undergone some major mechanical failure not making them worth repowering, but because they were detailed I didn't want to toss them.

Second, I don't see the rationale of having a four unit consist running with all powered, with a decoder in each, when two powered units with decoders and two dummies will do just fine.  But that is my preference and your preference is whatever you want it to be.  Third, I like most long time modelers have too many diesels, some of which do not perform up to standards.  If I like the unit, I dummy it and keep it in service.  Drives my wife crazy thinking I have more powered units than I really do.

Bob

[guegold]

Interesting points everyone.  Thanks for weighing in.

Bill

[NS-DJH]

A couple years ago I asked an Athearn rep at a WGH show exactly this question.  This string of responses gets to the heart of the rationale -- economics.  But here is what else I recall being told.

Some years back a new President came onboard at Athearn and instituted a number of accounting improvements.  As was mentioned, painting and assembling the shell turned out to be much more expensive to do than the rest assembly.  At that time Athearn was selling dummies at much lower prices than full-up runners.  The big discovery was that those prices were so low that Athearn was actually losing money on each dummy it sold!  Turned out that the cost of building a dummy was 80-90% of the cost of building a running locomotive.  Athearn concluded (probably rightly so) that there was little market for dummies that cost very close to the motorized versions. So they stopped doing it.

The Athearn rep actually gave me this recommendation if I wanted a dummy -- buy a new motorized locomotive (obviously makes Athearn happy), remove the mechanism (gets me the dummy that I want), and sell the removed components on E-bay (ought to get me enough money to make a down payment on my next locomotive (could make me happy).  I haven't tried this myself but may be worth some consideration.

[guegold]

Ha!  That is a good idea.  Seems like win-win all around.

B

[PASMITH]

Other uses for dummy's;

Building an HOn30 verticle boiler Climax  dummy powered by a tank car built in HO scale over an N gauge diesel mechanism.

Peter Smith, Memphis

[RMax1]

We seem to get into this discussion every few weeks.  I like dummies simply due to the cost of having to put a decoder into a functioning loco.  I am also not very good at it.  I don't get the cost issue to produce.  You would think it would not be that much more than that of a boxcar or any other rolling stock. 

RMax

[mlehman]

NS-DJH

SNIP...The big discovery was that those prices were so low that Athearn was actually losing money on each dummy it sold!  Turned out that the cost of building a dummy was 80-90% of the cost of building a running locomotive.  Athearn concluded (probably rightly so) that there was little market for dummies that cost very close to the motorized versions. So they stopped doing it.

SNIP

We're half way to the answer with that.

The other half of the answer is a bit of economic history. Today, most of the costs in building a dummy (or loco) isn't in the materials. It's the labor costs of final assembly, packaging, shipping and marketing. Those are essentially the same for a dummy as for a powered loco.

It used to be the chassis and motor made up a much larger percentage of the total cost to build each loco. Then it made sense -- and money -- to build dummies, so that's why Uncle Irv did it. I don't doubt they're correct that they no longer made money on dummies, but they did at one time,

There is an easy answer to the dummy-less dilemma that wasn't available back then -- use the famous auction site to call up some roundhouse queens at rock bottom pricing. So long as they roll and hold couplers, you've got a far larger collection of potential dummy offerings than ever officially produced by Athearn or anyone else. Heck, if it's only a wiring problem, as it often is with many of non-running locos, all the parts that come off, including the motor (rarely an issue) will still be good, too.