Athearn is bought out!!!!!

When I first read the subject of this thread ("Athearn is bought out!!!!!"), I was understandably saddened. As others have postulated, it may well be BAD in the long run.

Yet, I cannot help wondering why the expression "sold out" comes to mind?

Dieter Zakas Not For Sale, NJ

Reply to
Hzakas
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That's odd. IIRC, the Athearn steam drives were designed by Samhongsa, a long time maker of brass steam engines.

Paul A. Cutler III

************* Weather Or No Go New Haven *************
Reply to
Pac Man

Accurail isn't much better. At least Athearn has always used screws to put the trucks on, and not pins like Accurail. :-) And paint quality? I have not been impressed with Accurail's NH offerings. Sure, the new open hoppers are nice, but the boxcars and such that I have use poor, out of proportion "NH" logos. IMHO, Athearn's paint has improved quite a bit in recent years, especially on the newer paint jobs. The NH covered gondola is excellent, for example. And even with Athearn's "kludgy" appearance, they are still cheaper than Accurail or just about anybody else above the "toy train" level of Bachmann, Life-Like, Tyco, etc. My point is that all of the "lower end" kit models have both their ups and downs. Athearn and Accurail are no different in that respect.

Paul A. Cutler III

************* Weather Or No Go New Haven *************
Reply to
Pac Man

Hobby Oasis Jacksonville, FL

We've been around since '78. I worked there full time since '93. I bought the place last April when owners wanted to retire and moved it to it's new location in May. Good move as the business has beaten sales results over the last few years.

Dave

Reply to
Dave Henk

Sorry to hear about your misfortune there Roger, Athearn steam has yet to impress me. I guess what I was trying to refer to was that Athearn diesel units are basicly tanks. They will run forever. Great for a young kid to spend countless hours running them.,As will my Proto units someday, but I need 20 axle gears to get them all off of the "rip" track and back running again. Talked to my local shop tonight and ordered them, hope I get them soon!!!

Chooch

Reply to
chooch

"Pac Man"

They may well be, but there were tracking problems with both the 4-6-2 and the 2-8-2 caused by various design "probelms".

-- Cheers Roger T.

Home of the Great Eastern Railway

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Reply to
Roger T.

"Sirius" wrote

That statement, "prices of locos has gone DOWN " is certainly true of street prices for N scale locomotives. Had I made the statement, I would have added the adjective WAY .

Reply to
Dont Know My Name

This part should be of interest:

"how Horizon will handle sales to mail-order, online, and show vendors. On the one hand, I?m sure they?ll want to keep the Athearn brand very prominent in the hobby, and on the other, the shops are the core of their customer base."

That's a real conflict, since Horizon currently only sells to shops. That potentially affects train show vendors, and we know how many folks here shop online.

Mike Tennent "IronPenguin"

Reply to
Mike Tennent

I tend to agree. It's not so much that the AMOUNT of detail on the old Athearn 'blue box' kits was too little, but that it was 'heavy' (out of scale), 'mushy' (not crisp), and often just plain inaccurate (door tracks, door height, etc.). That's inaccurate in a GENERAL sense, not for specific prototypes. Of course the cars were mostly offered in paint schemes that were pure fiction on that particular shell anyway.

Now some of this still goes on. Once a manufacturer has spent the money to tool and produce car kit (or RTR), they will want to sell as many as possible. Offering the car in a variety of paint schemes is understandable. But few cars are really accurate for any but one class of car on one road, so compromises need to be made. As long as the basic car is CLOSE to the prototype of the paint schemes, this is probably acceptable to all but the most critical.

The buyer can , if they so desire, add or change details to get the car accurate, or at least close enough for THEIR needs. Lots of after market parts are available to assist with this.

And some manufacturers offer the model in a variety of subtypes, to make them far more accurate for specific roads. Kadee is the best example of this. But such minor revisions cost money to produce, and we all know the Kadee cars are among the most expensive out there. But they are really nice too.

Fortunately, most of the current manufacturers are being more careful to get their models closer to the prototype. Sometimes a few extra parts are provided to allow the user to make simple 'mods'. This may also entail merely NOT offering the car in outlandish paint schemes inappropriate for the base model. To get around this a bit, many are now offering the same schemes in multiple car numbers. This increases sales potential since real railroads rarely buy one-of-a-kind cars. Usually they have fair sized fleets of each car type, and the modeler may wish to represent this in their roster.

Don't get me wrong. The old Athearn, and MDC, etc. kits were fine in their day. But they're often not much better than 'generic' car types, made using 30-50 year old designs and tooling, and downright crude by modern standards. Still, they're a long way from the worst products offered, and reasonably priced for what you get.

Dan Mitchell ==========

Bruce Fav>

Reply to
Daniel A. Mitchell

Roger,

I use contact cement or Walthers 'Goo' to attach the metal weight. I then turn the floor assembly over and drill/tap through the plastic floor/metal weight for 2-56 screws. I toss the the plastic 'king pins'. For the couplers, I have added some styrene plastic to the 'channel' above the coupler pocket. I then cut off the 'pin' on the coupler cover and drill it out to clear a 2-56 screw. I then drill/tap the existing pin/hole in the actual coupler pocket so I can run a 2-56 screw up to secure the standard Kadee #5 coupler and centering spring. All of this takes maybe 5-10 minutes of work. I have done all of this manually with a pin vise, but I have a real nice Micro-Mark drill press that I normally use so I can get through the metal weight with little effort. The standard 'weight' included should take the car up to about 4 oz - perfect for a 40' HO car. I also toss he provided plastic wheels and replace them with P2K metal wheels. The only this I do not like about the Accurail cars is the cast on grab irons. I wish the would just cast 'dimples' for good metal ones and let the modeler make a choice if what he/she wants to do. The paint jobs in the O/B cars are really good, and even though the car siding boards are over done on 'distressing' - I still like the cars. I 'grew up' on Athearn/MDC cars and they can look decent if you really spend some time getting the roofwalk attached evenly(no 'wave') and apply a good paint/decal/weathering job. The standard Athearn paint job is just too washed out(and has been since at least the 60's). Other problems have been the coupler 'clips' and not enough weight in the cars. When I was in college and broke, I used to re-gauge the Athearn wheel sets and apply epoxy to the inside rim so the wheels would not shift out of gauge. I really could not afford Kadee wheel sets at the time. My re-gauged wheels ran great on my cars at the club, but suffered from dirt/gunk build up. I have since gone to metal wheels(where is that order for 15 packs of P2K wheels I ordered from M B Klein?) I look at my 40' Athearn cars that I built in the late 60's/early 70's and they stand up very well in a train. But, close up the roof walks and doors really give them away. What I have done in the past year is to take standard MDC 'rib side' box cars and toss everything but the shell. I rebuild the doors(non working), scrape off the grab irons & replace them with metal wire ones and Kadee ladders, use Kadee roof walks, and build a new plastic underframe with after-market stirrup steps. A lot of work, but it is about as close to a Kadee PS-1 I will every see for a Milwaukee rib side! I am in the process of trying to build up a roster of freight cars that will look OK when running with P2K, Kadee, Red Caboose, Intermountain, etc... cars on my layout.

Jim Bernier

"Roger T." wrote:

Reply to
Jim Bernier

Comment:

I'd be VERY careful using Walthers' "Goo" on plastic. I've seen many (several dozen) plastic cars totally ruined by 'Goo". It attacks the plastic, SLOWLY. And, cementing Athearn car weights in place is/was one common use for 'Goo". Even it's dry state. It causes warping and swelling of the plastic. Place a dry "goo'd" item in contact with plastic, and SLOWLY, over perhaps a couple years, the plastic will be deformed. I don't know what is going on here. The reaction occurs long after most, or all, the 'Goo's solvent is long gone. I don't know what plastics may be affected, but clearly the Styrene family IS. Unfortunately, this is what most of our hobby items are made of.

While "Goo" is a useful cement for wood, metal, and rubber, I've essentially stopped using it for plastic.

I have had excellent luck (so far) in using the new rubber-toughened ACC cement for the kind of things 'Goo" is/was good for. This is sometimes sold in hobby shops as "tire cement" for the RC car guys. It does not form as strong a bond, but is FAR more forgiving of minor flexing in a bonded joint. Being a flat black color it is not good for some things, but CAN be painted successfully.

Dan Mitchell ==========

Jim Bernier wrote:

Reply to
Daniel A. Mitchell

Well, I go to three different hobby shops around me. Two of them have rather large RC departments, so if they're already ordering from Horizon for the RC stuff, they'll just add on to their current ordering for Athearn stuff. I presume they also order from Walthers, for the other lines.

The third shop doesn't really do RC much at all (if any). They generally order from Walthers (in fact, they were listed once in a Walthers Sale flyer as a participant). They have a lot of Athearn stuff (old stuff too, at $3.19/box at one time), so they may have a problem.

In the stores I mention, Athearn by far has the most shelf space. Having to order that stuff from a different distributor may well hurt that segment; I can speculate that the third store (the one without RC) might be hurt the worst, since there'd be a lot of bare space that needs to be filled. You'd be talking two sides of the aisleway, at least.

Kennedy

Reply to
Kennedy (no longer not on The Haggis!)

The first thing that occurred to me when I heard this was about the spare parts business. I buy a lot of spare parts here and there, depending on what I need. Things like gears, trucks, Blomberg sideframes, and the like. You kinda wonder what'll happen to that segment when Horizon takes it all over.

Kennedy

Reply to
Kennedy (no longer not on The Haggis!)

I hate to de-power locomotives, mainly due to the cost of buying a motor and geartrain that I don't want to use, but I de-power locos mainly to turn them into sound mules. So, I need the power pickups in the trucks (which is why I have to buy spare power trucks for those Dummy units I do find).

Kennedy

Reply to
Kennedy (no longer not on The Haggis!)

Got a note from Peter King this morning, in his newsletter. Horizon will only sell to storefronts, so it pretty much takes him out of the Athearn process, unless he finds another middleman. Which also means that Big Al and Tom's Trains (who I've bought from as well) are probably in the same boat. I'm awaiting a note from Big Al, he does a lot of preorders, and Athearn has said that by Mar04, all undelivered preorders will be cancelled; which could really put a dent in Al.

I've also bought stuff from Hobby Circle, but not Athearn. Still, this all does affect him as well.

Kennedy

Reply to
Kennedy (no longer not on The Haggis!)

Reply to
Jon Miller

"Jim Bernier"

Thanks Jim, really useful advice, especially about the weight.

-- Cheers Roger T.

Home of the Great Eastern Railway

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Reply to
Roger T.

The Bachmann 4-4-0 is a decent model for the price. A decade ago, as a birthday gift, my wife gave me one of each (coal and wood) and they both ran very well (surprisingly) until Philippe at the age of 3 took one out to the sandbox. It's now a display piece.....;0)

Pulling power is not too much of a consideration if you are modelling the

1880's because most trains would be fairly short. I used to run a handful of Scotia Scale Models (6 or 7, all 36', CV trucks), cars with this loco and it pulled very well even up 2% slopes. The ones I own both have the deep flanges which is a problem on anything less than code 100 rail and the tender drive with the shaft caused some problems with S-curves and turnouts. They are easy to disassemble and readily modified or bashed. The mechanism seemed to be well made, had little gear slop and ran quietly and smoothly even at low speeds, although the siderods are a bit 'floppy'.

Ian Mathers Yellowknife, NT

Reply to
Ian G. Mathers

March 1st is D-Day. From that day onward all new Athearn production will be via Horizon only all retail stores that want Athearn will have to go to Horizon. No mailorder only dealers period. Horizon will not sell to mail order only businesses. This was laid out in a letter I got from Horizon whom I already deal with.

Dave Jenk Jacksonville, FL

Reply to
Dave Henk

I prefer RTV Silicone Rubber. Have used this for nearly 25 years to add extra weight to cars as well as adhere the Accurail weights without a problem.

Reply to
Dave Henk

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