mlehman I don't buy for investment purposes, I buy for operational needs, so not real concerned about whether or not the original purchaser took a big hit or what the investment possibilities might be to sell high later. What matters is whether I think the price is right NOW for ME. Haven't had much of a budget lately, but there are a lot of brass bargains out there right now.
I don't buy for investment purposes, I buy for operational needs, so not real concerned about whether or not the original purchaser took a big hit or what the investment possibilities might be to sell high later. What matters is whether I think the price is right NOW for ME. Haven't had much of a budget lately, but there are a lot of brass bargains out there right now.
Amen to this thinking. If I was thinking one bit about the resale value of a model train when I purchased it, I would simply never buy any - at any price.
I buy them to play with, run, modifiy (that always gives the brass guys the willy nillies), weather (lightly is my taste), leave to the grandson if he is interested, or let my wife give away when I'm gone.
But the last thing I ever think about is them being an investment - even the two brass ones I own.....
Investments......I have rental properties......now they are good investments.
Hobbies......trains, hifi/vinyl records, guns, and the practical hobby of improving, maintaining and tinkering with my 20 year old GRAVELY lawn tractor........
I don't expect any big returns, or to even "get out" even, on any of that stuff. But I don't have get out even, because I never spent any money on beer, cigarettes, tatoos or wild living. I spent that money on trains..........I don't need it back.
So I can paint them whatever roadname I like, change them however I like, without loosing any sleep about their future "value"......
OK, I've said enough, I will leave you all to it, and go play with some of my cheap Bachmann, Athearn and Proto toys.......
Sheldon
I would like to remind everyone, that the OP has expressed an interest in a specific Northern Pacific name train, and the locos that pulled it. He may not have really made that clear in this post, but he did in his previous post that he referred to in this one.
I'm not a NP expert, but I do believe that the locos the OP is looking for are EMD F7's or F3's or both.
So, based on that, I'm going to make, and repeat, a few comments:
Athearn may well have some quailty control issues with SD70 whatevers, or GP40-2's, I don't know, those locos are way past my era, and I would not know one if I tripped over it.
But quality control issues do not seem to be a problem with Genesis EMD F units from what I have seen and heard - and I have a few Genesis F units..........I think the OP is looking for F units????????
Again, not always a good idea to judge a whole brand based on one, or even a few products. Better to judge each product, regardless of brand. In these days of overseas manufacturing, a Genesis F unit may come from a completely different factory than that troubled SD70ABCXYZ..........
Still the Intermountain may be a better bet, just based on availablity.........
Atlas is not in the game.....they don't make F units.......good as they are, I don't own one Atlas loco - they have little in my era, and I'm not getting on a list to buy them.....
Brass - cost, value or quality aside, just my opinion, while I understand and even agree to a point about the higher quality of brass steam locomotives, I have yet to see a brass HO scale model of an EMD F unit that I would bother to own - strickly from a detail/appearance standpoint. Some of the most recent may be just as good as Genesis or Intermountain, but surely not any better.
Again, to be clear, and not to offend as I am sometimes accussed of doing, but I see no point in brass diesel locos. I'm not convinced one bit that any of the drivelines in brass diesels are now, or have ever been any better than the current state of the art inside a Genesis, Intermountain, Bowser/Stewart or Proto. The drives in the few I owned "back in the day" quickly caused me to sell them off in favor of other products.......
And the detail, or "fine-ness" of detail on brass diesels is generally lacking from what I have seen. So if the detail is equal, and the drive is equal, why would I buy brass? Again, steam may well be a different story, especially regarding running gear.....
Who last offered an F7 in brass? Road specific details for NP? Sound and DCC? Division Point? 10 years ago? How many of those are on the open market right now?
But what do I know, I'm just a guy a who started working in the local hobby shop at age 13.......in 1970.
rrebellBrass has been losing its value big time except for some rare peices. Been wanting to buy a brass shop engine but just didn't want to spend the money even though the price has come down alot.
This is what's called a buyer's market. Prices are soft, demand is low. Buy low criteria are often met, compared to past pricing.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
The peak of brass activity, sales, and interest may be traced back to mid 1997. After, many who had brass from the 60's through 90's began retiring, downsizing, leaving the hobby, and just dying. Also younger newbies entering the hobby from late 90's had very little history with steam models which were the prototypes of most brass of the day. Then of course companies began producing not only very good plastic and die- cast models of both steam, diesel and electric, but quite affordable. The other reason for decline in brass values is the tremendous glut of used brass models now on the market due to the many estate sales and of course venues like eBay. It boils down to the basic economic driver....supply vs. demand. Eventually and I'm seeing this now, the supply is drying up and demand is also on the rise. Just check out eBay sales and dealers like Brasstrains.com.
Point...if you don't have a need to sell your brass now, and you are not in the extreme winter of your life, hang on to them for a bit and see where the market goes. Brass Expo was just resurrected and I think other similar events will follow.This will be a major plus for the brass end of the hobby.
HZ
Brass has been losing its value big time except for some rare peices. Been wanting to buy a brass shop engine but just didn't want to spend the money even though the price has come down alot. Used to be a real bargin was around $500, now $350. I even picked up a PFM 0-6-0 for cheap a few years back, nice looking but to bring it up to running standards would have taken too much time, and I do have the skills.
I would skip Genesis completely due to QA/QC issues,(poor assembly poor choice of bulbs etc) and go with Atlas,Walthers Proto or IM in that order.
Not sure about brass other then you can usually buy two or three Atlas Silver Series for the price of one brass engine.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Mention was made about if money is not an issue...then perhaps brass! It really is not about money, but is everything to do with value and quality. Brass models are handcrafted from non-ferrous material vs. a mass produced plastic or die-cast model. Plastic and cast models have come along way in the last decade and many do run to almost pefection, have excellent finishes, and now many come with DCC. What many do not talk about is for how long do they run. Some actually never find out due to how many hours does the average loco run?
Value....I've made mention of this before, but here it is again. A typical used brass USRA 2-8-2 by a good importer (most are/were good) will sell for around $350. A new plastic counterpart...around the same. Here is the problem......a few years later, if the brass 2-8-2 is to be sold, a good chance exists that it will sell for the same price as originally paid for, but the plastic 2-8-2......no where near this figure.
There have been brass importers who have brought in some real clunkers in both steam and diesel...as in early plastic. I have been playing with brass toys for going now on 50+ years, and wiith only a very few exceptions, I have not met a brass loco that could not be tweaked to perfection. Remember, this is a hands on hobby, and if you do not have the skills to work on locos, not a problem as there are many who do and are easy to find. (Jan Willard now does all of my work)
In 1973-1975 when I owned a train store, I ran a PFM PRR K4 4-6-2 over 8 hours per day for over a year and a half on the store layout. I'd guess easily the total running hours exceeded 1000, but the only problems were the nickel plating on the drivers wore off...but not an issue!! I just had to clean them more often. Also I maintained this loco with lubing and tweaking. ( I still have this K4 and it still runs perfectly) The plastic of the day...mainly AHM and Athearn that ran on the store pike had embarrasingly short life spans. Today's plastic would most likely do a bit better, but I think I made my point.
Overall...enjoy the hobby and purchase what you can afford, but if you can afford the initial outlay, purchase the finest. Note: I also teach clawhammer banjo and guitar (www.newsoutherncowtippers.com ). The mere mention a a "student" instrument brings goose bumps on my goose bumps and then some. If learning an instrument, always go for the finest within your price range. It will be easier to play and hold its value...often appreciating. Brass models.......!!!
Well, I don't do DCC or sound, but if I was buying Northern Pacific F units, I would buy Intermountain. They are well detailed, run great, and they are in stock now in NP..........
That said I have a sizeable fleet of both Intermountain and Genesis F units, I don't really see much difference - the headlight issue simply does not effect me with DC.
I have lots of other, older, Proto locos, but only one set of their F units. I will not buy any more Proto F units because of the slower gearing.
Side note - I have NEVER found every product from ANY brand to be up to my needs or standards, so I have never been comfortable with saying "you should buy brand X, or brand Y, but not brand Z".
I like to judge each product on its merrits. I have lots of Bachmann/Spectrum stuff, but there are "known duds" in their line I would never have...........true of every brand I'm afraid.
I consider the new Proto F units and E units a bit of a dud because of the gearing and because they only offered the undecorated F unit with a moderized shell - I am a freelance modeler modeling 1954 - I want the as built details.......
I hear people complain all the time about Athearn regarding all these "newer" diesels, and maybe Athearn does have some issues with those products. But since they are out of my era, it does not effect me, I'm not buying those models. It only matters to me how good their F units are.
They missed my business on the GP7/9, I already had a lifetime supply of Proto GP7's when Athearn came out with theirs.
So judge each product, don't make blanket assumptions by brand, your modeling will be more "complete", and likely cost less.......
I would say it should depend more on what engine and paint scheme you need to pull the consist.
Most may have been available in plastic buy maybe a few only in brass. Some versions can be hard to find.
I love brass but some proto are hard to beat for value. I no longer use any Genesis units at all.
A caveat on the Athearn use of bulbs vs LEDs. Yeah, bulbs are an anachronism and really wish Athearn would get to the 21st century some year and join the rest of the world. Bulbs do look better...until they're dead. And if you intend to run them on a regular basis, they will die soon enough then you facing replacing them. So if you like to just think about how much better bulbs look -- and not actually spend much time LOOKING at those nice bulbs by actually operating these units -- then, sure, buy them and set them on your display shelf and feel good about how nice they'd look if you actually were to run them.
If you're like me, there's another solution. I added a number of Genesis Fs to my fleet in the several years before adopted DCC. Sure enough, running them causes the lights to go out, especially so once converted to DCC.
Then an unrelated development, Blackstone came out with their HOn3 C-19. The Tsu-750 decoders were rather hot-running at the standard ~14 volts most DCC power defaults to, so I dialed back my command station to run at 12.5 volts to protect the Tsunamis. Guess what?
Don't think I've lost a bulb since then.
Basically, Athearn should be spec-ing a different bulb than the 1.5 volt-rated ones they use. But dial back your DCC voltage and you'll likely have few problems because of that.
I have several Intermountain F units. They Look good and run great. I also have several Life Like proto 1000 F3s and a few Proto 2000 GPs. Good looking good pullers. I had cracked gears on the Geeps. I simply replaced them with axles from old Athearn blueboxunits and have had no further problems.
Southbound,
Here's my experiences/inexperiences with the brands you mentioned:
Tom
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
I would agree with ricktrains4824 there is one thing i would add to this atlas usees leds and if you want to compare pulling power protos are the best due to greater weight.atlas is no2 intermountainand atheran are tied.
Athearn Genesis, Intermountain, WalthersProto, and Brass locomotives. I just don't know which one to choose. Again, I don't care about the price, since I am not in a hurry.
As is true with many things, it depends.
For example early Athearn Genesis had some issues with running and construction; most Genesis made in the last 8 years is generally quite good. Avoid any Genesis sound loco's with MRC sound units - those were so bad people demanded Athearn stop using them and around 8 years ago Athearn switched to Sound Traxx Tsunami.
Intermountain has had their teething pains; if you get any of their HO Cab Forwards, make sure it's either 3rd run or 2nd run thats been factory refurbished. The F units are pretty decent but there were some complaints about the early SD40-2's, but those have been improved upon in recent runs.
Walthers Proto I've heard are good; the only Walthers Proto I own are is an ABBA set of F7's. Walthers has made improvements to the Life Like P2K engines.
As for Brass, it's generally out of my price range so only know enough to be dangerous - with older brass, some ran quite well, others needed a ton of work and remotoring. Howard Zane is a brass expert and if money is no object, I"m sure he would be happy to help you out!
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
I will say this: My answer is slanted towards using DCC, and HO scale, as I do. If you don't, your needs are different, and my answer is not the one you need.
If your needs are different, you might want to explain what your needs (and wants) are.
Therefore, if your needs are different, just skip over the rest of my answer.
Athearn Genesis still uses incandescent lighting, while Intermountain uses LED. This alone is worth going Intermountain over Athearn Genesis. (Some feel that I am jumping the gun, by refusing any loco, even very well made and extremely well detailed ones, simply over incandescent bulbs. My response: How many of those extremely fine details are you breaking off when you replace those short-lived bulbs? Enough to make it not worth the hassle. I will skip it, from here on out, thanks. My one Genesis unit will be my only Genesis unit, thank you.) Add in that Intermountain uses Loksound, this makes it a slam dunk.
Walther's Proto also uses LED's, so again, I would take them over Athearn Genesis. Because I like Loksound better than other brands, I would still go Intermountain over Walthers, and Walthers over Athearn Genesis, for LED over bulbs.
Brass: Zero experience, as the only brass I have come across, was either not ready for DCC, needing converted, and possibly remotored to do so, as well as other work, or out of my price range. So, because of this, I will refrain from commenting on brass.
Details: All three I have commented on, Genesis, Proto, and Intermountain, have very good detailing out of the box, with many prototype specific details added by the manufacturer on most units. No issues with either of the three on this matter.
Again, if your needs are different from mine, my answers will not work.
Ricky W.
HO scale Proto-freelancer.
My Railroad rules:
1: It's my railroad, my rules.
2: It's for having fun and enjoyment.
3: Any objections, consult above rules.
I'm going to expand on my other thread (NCL in HO scale), but this time, I'm going to focus more on the locomotives. I have heard good things about Athearn Genesis, Intermountain, WalthersProto, and Brass locomotives. I just don't know which one to choose. Again, I don't care about the price, since I am not in a hurry.