JimValle Actually the old Athern BB's offer a lot of possibilities for those who like to tinker with and customize their engines. You can start with engines pulled out of under-the-table boxes at train shows and bought cheaply.
Actually the old Athern BB's offer a lot of possibilities for those who like to tinker with and customize their engines. You can start with engines pulled out of under-the-table boxes at train shows and bought cheaply.
Oh, how I know about working with Athearn BB engines for Kitbashing on 2 fronts.
1) I have 8 GP20s which I term Tythearn. The engines are a Tyco GP20 shell with some added details (and some body putty) with a modified BB GP35 drive. (The only modifications are trimming the sides around the motor area to fit the shell better and removing the coupler mounts in order to body mount the couplers to the shell.) The Athearn stanchions from the 35 even worked their way in as they were reused when the handrails were rebuilt. (Using a Tyco metal handrail upgrade kit for the handrail and the stanchions bent to fit.)
2) I am working on another project which involves 3 Stewart F3 shells (ABB). I decided to use Athearn F7 BB drives for that one as well (Edit: with close coupling kits installed except on the A front [see below]). For where the project will end up, I will most likely have to be the one to fix them if there ever is a problem. The Athearn units are something I know. (And the modification to the Stewart shells wasn't hard and it doesn't change the look of the shell at all.) The only major compromise was that the front coupler mount on the A unit didn't fit with the shell so that will have to be body mounted. (That will be a "dummy" coupler so strength won't be a major concern.)
jecorbettI'm not terribly sentimental about them
Me neither, or only to the same degree I am sentimental about vinyl records, but when compact discs became economical, I was all too happy to rid myself of the snap, crackles, pops and thumps I heard on many of my LPs! Still, I get a kind of cool feeling when I see a good turntable in action, which is extremely rare these days! =P Ah the olden days!
am getting ready to sell them to one of the LHSes that buy used equipment. They are asking $15 for ones in good condition which means they probably offer $5 for them. When I returned to the hobby around 2000, the plan was to build a new DCC layout and upgrade all my old locos with decoders. I saw an ad in Trainworld offering BB F7s for the blowout price of $30.
Maybe my memory is fuzzy but $30 seems high for a bb F7, but hey, you are talking about 15 years ago! Maybe they were that high. I remember paying around $75 ea for a new Stewart F7 in the early 1990's, which was a lot back then - but they were/are KATO made after all.
I bought about six of them not caring what the road name was figuring I was going to custom paint them. Then I ordered my first sound equipped diesel and saw how much better the detailing was on the new stuff and realized I'd made a big mistake. Not a single one of my BB diesels has been upgraded and I have no plans to do so. They served me well on the old layout but it's time to move on.
Some bb diesels were better than others. I found the F7 to be crude, especially the awful windshields, number boards and air grills. When Stewart came out with their F unit around 1989 I was so pleased as I could dispose of my Athearn F7's as soon as possible. That said, the GP40-2 and SD40-2 shells were much better and if detailed well, would be fine looking models. However when it came to DCC, it was a good deal of extra work to remove the motor and isolate it from the frame yada yada. I know the real mechanic's in the hobby would make fast work of adding a decoder to the old blue box Athearn. What was it Clint Eastwood used to say in one of his old movies: "a man has to know is limitiations"!! I just find doing all that stuff very frustrating and I don't have a good budy who is going to do it for me. Solution? Newer loco's that take light board decoders or 9 pin plug in!!!
Don't get me started about mounting Kadee's on blue box loco's. Definitely not a "drop in" conversion - and to get them to mount in the box they came with, it was a lot of filing, then tapping them out for a screw etc. Some parts of the hobby were just not fun for everyone; God bless you if you enjoyed that.
Anyway, for those who still wax nostalgic about Athearn blue box loco's, they can still be had at many a train show!
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
riogrande5761 jecorbett I'm not terribly sentimental about them Me neither, or only to the same degree I am sentimental about vinyl records, but when compact discs became economical, I was all too happy to rid myself of the snap, crackles, pops and thumps I heard on many of my LPs! Still, I get a kind of cool feeling when I see a good turntable in action, which is extremely rare these days! =P Ah the olden days!
jecorbett I'm not terribly sentimental about them
I've never been able to part with my vinyl records even though I can't remember when I last had a functional turntable. I am sentinmental about them.
am getting ready to sell them to one of the LHSes that buy used equipment. They are asking $15 for ones in good condition which means they probably offer $5 for them. When I returned to the hobby around 2000, the plan was to build a new DCC layout and upgrade all my old locos with decoders. I saw an ad in Trainworld offering BB F7s for the blowout price of $30. Maybe my memory is fuzzy but $30 seems high for a bb F7, but hey, you are talking about 15 years ago! Maybe they were that high. I remember paying around $75 ea for a new Stewart F7 in the early 1990's, which was a lot back then - but they were/are KATO made after all.
I bought about six of them not caring what the road name was figuring I was going to custom paint them. Then I ordered my first sound equipped diesel and saw how much better the detailing was on the new stuff and realized I'd made a big mistake. Not a single one of my BB diesels has been upgraded and I have no plans to do so. They served me well on the old layout but it's time to move on. Some bb diesels were better than others. I found the F7 to be crude, especially the awful windshields, number boards and air grills. When Stewart came out with their F unit around 1989 I was so pleased as I could dispose of my Athearn F7's as soon as possible. That said, the GP40-2 and SD40-2 shells were much better and if detailed well, would be fine looking models. However when it came to DCC, it was a good deal of extra work to remove the motor and isolate it from the frame yada yada. I know the real mechanic's in the hobby would make fast work of adding a decoder to the old blue box Athearn. What was it Clint Eastwood used to say in one of his old movies: "a man has to know is limitiations"!! I just find doing all that stuff very frustrating and I don't have a good budy who is going to do it for me. Solution? Newer loco's that take light board decoders or 9 pin plug in!!!
I asked the guy at my LHS if there was still a market for them and he said every time he puts them on his second hand shelf they always sell. He told me nobody was going to get rich selling them, but I could pick up a few bucks with them.
During my first stint in the hobby as a teenager, I amassed a collection of ~50 BB locos. I didn't have space for a layout, but I would bring half a dozen of them to run on the BSME layout in downtown Baltimore every Friday.
During the other six days of the week, I would be kitbashing and/or custom painting them. I remember that excellent article in RMC (~1971?) that showed how to convert an SDP40 into an SD40, and a GP35 into a GP40 (of which my favorite road, the B&O, had hundreds!). Later I also did a few GP38's. These are some of my happiest hobby-related memories.
My interest in trains faded quickly after I graduated from high school and joined the Navy. Fast cars and women took their place. I thought I'd never be doing mrr again, so I just donated my BB collection to the club [that's not the first or the last stupid thing I've done in my life...].
15 years later when I returned to the hobby, scale-width hood GP7/9's were available from Front Range, and GP40's and 38's from Atlas/Roco. I bought ~10 BB F-units and painted/decaled them, but when the Stewart Fs came on the market a year later, the BB F's instantly became shelf queens. The only other Athearn loco I got was an SW1200. I still have that one, it is waiting for DCC conversion if I ever get around to it...
-Ken in Maryland (B&O modeler, former CSX modeler)
riogrande5761Don't get me started about mounting Kadee's on blue box loco's. Definitely not a "drop in" conversion - and to get them to mount in the box they came with, it was a lot of filing, then tapping them out for a screw etc.
Filing? A Dremel Tool is your best friend when it comes to such tasks..
I have never owned a tap..I use the KD coupler box and self tapping screws and a touch of Walthers Goo on the coupler pad..
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
jecorbettI've never been able to part with my vinyl records even though I can't remember when I last had a functional turntable. I am sentinmental about them.
Ditto that. I may loose all my marbles one day and pick up an old decent quality turntable. I swear I see so much legacy electronic equipment around the west suburbs of Washington DC (Northern Virginia) for super cheap as everyone dumps it. You never know! I still have a small stack of vinyl records too I forgot I still had - found them in the basement - they somehow surviveed many moved of the past 20 years.
My memory is fuzzy too but it seems like the MSRP for Athearn BB F7s was around $60 back then. I remember buying my first one for around $20 in the late 1970s but that was before hyperinflation set in. What I do clearly remember is that when I saw the Trainworld ad for $29.95, I thought it was a steal. It turned out it was.
The $20 figure jives with what I remember from the late 70's, I graduated form HS in 1977 and remember seeing Athearn loco's for around that price in a hobby shop in Sacramento. But $60 still seems nutty for an F7, even in the early 1990's, maybe someone with an add or something from that time can confirm. Who knows, maybe you are right. I think the Stewarts were around $99 MRSP give or take, and it was a strain for me to afford them as a college student at around $70 - good discount price.
Filing? A Dremel Tool is your best friend when it comes to such tasks.. I have never owned a tap..I use the KD coupler box and self tapping screws and a touch of Walthers Goo on the coupler pad..
Oh yes, my Demel I bought back in the early 80's still runs pretty well - funny the one I picked up at a train show (new in the box and probably made in the 90's) the shaft broke after using it for just a few months - quality of later model Dremel's isn't worth dirt!
Anyway, I still hate the Athearn blue box coupler mounts - even with a dremel it's a heck of a lot of trial and error to get the pad ground down to get the KD in it's box to match the height gauge. I've got a long list of other things on my hobby to do list that I'd rather do so the Athearn bb coupler mounts seem to forever remain at the bottom of the list. Maybe when I'm retired some day?
.....Anyway, I still hate the Athearn blue box coupler mounts - even with a dremel it's a heck of a lot of trial and error to get the pad ground down to get the KD in it's box to match the height gauge. I've got a long list of other things on my hobby to do list that I'd rather do so the Athearn bb coupler mounts seem to forever remain at the bottom of the list. Maybe when I'm retired some day?
I used a hacksaw to slice 'em off, then added mounting pads to the underside of the pilots using built-up stacks of .060" sheet styrene. As an added benefit, it allowed the area below the couplers to be closed.
Wayne
doctorwayne riogrande5761 wrote the following post 2 hours ago: .....Anyway, I still hate the Athearn blue box coupler mounts - even with a dremel it's a heck of a lot of trial and error to get the pad ground down to get the KD in it's box to match the height gauge. I've got a long list of other things on my hobby to do list that I'd rather do so the Athearn bb coupler mounts seem to forever remain at the bottom of the list. Maybe when I'm retired some day? I used a hacksaw to slice 'em off, then added mounting pads to the underside of the pilots using built-up stacks of .060" sheet styrene. As an added benefit, it allowed the area below the couplers to be closed. Wayne
I have read about that technique in some MR articles and how toos back in the 80's and 90's. In fact I hacked off one mount on a bb D&RGW SD40T-2 I had with the intentions of body mounting the coupler, and then put it off - and later sold it. The guy I sold it to commented that it was missing the mount - I had totally forgot about it and was a bit embarrassed. It turned out ok, the guy was more of a modeler than I was!
Anyway, Here I was thinking this issue was mostly moot because I was down to 3 bb Athearns now, stored away, but then I remembered doh! Those Proto 2000 SD7's and SD9's - 4 of them! Fun fun.
And another added benefit, you don't have to worry about shorting out or insulating if there aren't metal KD couplers directly in contact with the frame, unless you use the KD draft gear box provided in the small packages. These days I buy KD's in bulk 90% of the time so my draft gear boxes are getting hard to find!
riogrande5761...These days I buy KD's in bulk 90% of the time so my draft gear boxes are getting hard to find!
Kadee also offers the boxes separately, although many of them nowadays are engineering plastic, which is difficult to use if you wish to cement them together or cement them in place. When I last checked, I believe that the #5s were still styrene.
doctorwayne riogrande5761 ...These days I buy KD's in bulk 90% of the time so my draft gear boxes are getting hard to find! Kadee also offers the boxes separately, although many of them nowadays are engineering plastic, which is difficult to use if you wish to cement them together or cement them in place. When I last checked, I believe that the #5s were still styrene. Wayne
riogrande5761 ...These days I buy KD's in bulk 90% of the time so my draft gear boxes are getting hard to find!
I'm in the process of converting a number of my old passenger car fleet with truck mounted couplers to body mounts using Jay-Bee coupler pads. In conjunction with that I bought a couple envelopes of KD draft gear boxes. They are plastic. The Jay-Bee coupler pads come with mounting screws and I use those to mount the draft gear boxes but for added stability I use a drop of liquid cement to hold the two pieces of the box together as well as lock it into place on the coupler pad. I find if I just use just the screw if it's a little too tight, the coupler won't swing and a little too loose and the coupler box swivels. It was hard to get it just right.
doctorwayneKadee also offers the boxes separately, although many of them nowadays are engineering plastic, which is difficult to use if you wish to cement them together or cement them in place. When I last checked, I believe that the #5s were still styrene. Wayne
I won't need to buy them separately. Heck, in the early days I bought so many envelopes of KD#5's where never needed the draft gear box, that I'm sure I have a bunch of them around here somewhere. I never threw them away. Any time I have used them I used screws to hold them on - either in the center spot or the two side holes - last time I mounted a set was a few months ago on a brass caboose - thats how they are done.
One of the first pics I took with my digital camera of the layout back in 2011 was one of my Chessie System SD40-2 locomotives in my Columbus (OH) staging yard. Last month, I finished converting all of my rolling stock to Kadee couplers, which look much better. :)
My first Athearn locomotive was my Amtrak SDP40F (actually an FP45), which still runs.
watch?v=YnHPPiKY7Kc
Three of the four trains in this video were pulled by blue-box Athearn locomotives.
watch?v=hoTU5Bp4kyw
Kevin
http://chatanuga.org/RailPage.html
http://chatanuga.org/WLMR.html
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