The collapse of Athearn / what happened to some of their locomotives...RETIRED

[WSOR 3801]

Nothing wrong with the iron wheels. Can't get the new wheels from Athearn, except if you buy a whole engine. Needed to fix some P2K with cracked gears.

[Don Gibson]

What happened was Irv died, and Mrs A. sold the Company (how strange) those 'money' boy's sold it in turn to Horizon Distributing.

I think what you are aggreived by must be the disappearance of those 'shake the box' kits. They (some) have reappeared with improved detail, paint, and better drives as RTR to meet the competition (Athearn was getting their clock cleaned by Proto 2000).

As for BB Kits. Have you noticed how quickly the Hobbyshop's have dropped them?
They are still available if you want them. Contact Athearn. They cost more - but what doesn't?

Miss those iron wheels? 1 amp motors?

[jrbernier]

Pat,

What are you talking about? Life-Likes GE's are a U28B and a U30B - neither are even close to anything like the old Athearn U28B/U30B/U33b 'wide body' engines.
The Atlas U30C was NOT a rerun of the Athearn 'wide body' U30C. I am sure you are the only '1' of 200,000 modelers that think these P2K/Atlas engines are produced from old Athearn molds. And Athearn did not produce a U23B.......
Athearn was purchased by a group from Irv Athearn, IIRC. They then started redoing the line and added the Genesis Series of high end models. I doubt that Horizon wanted to buy an 'on the ropes' operation - Athearn has been the '600 lb gorilla' of HO manufacturers for many years.

Jim

[Budliner]

that gg1 looks like ahm ihc

[Anonymous]

Atlas and Life Like can jack the price up becuase they make big improvements. The added detail is great, but the best thing is thier drivelines.

[dragonriversteel]

Hello all,

In my opinion,after the collaspe of athearn...horizon hobby took over . After that the big bucks guys,must have thought, what can make us more cash ?

Sale the old molds and tooling to another company. I mean really...come on people. Yes but thats what horizon has done, case in point. Life- Likes NEW U23B {was athearns first}. To start up a new model locomotive line requires maybe $50,000 to $60,000 dollars. Why waste 50 grand on a new mold,tooling ect,when you can buy a used mold from athearn...fix it up add some detail and call it new life like product U23B.

Life-Like isn't the only one to jump on the band wagon,Atlas is also guilty U30C . Surely some of you have noticed the ole switch aru ? I figured I'd get some slack from this post ,but hey...its the truth.

Companys buy and sale product lines all the time ,but its when they try to pull the wool over someone's eyes and jack the price up that bugs me.

Am I the only one ,out of 200,000 MR folks that think this way.

Patrick
Dragon River Steel Corp {DRSC}