Athearn Challengers on the way!

[UP_Phill]

I just came across this at Nscale Supply:

"We have been told the Challengers are on the water. They are expected to start shipping by the middle of January. We still have some room in our reservations, but some are already sold out. If you have a challenger reserved please make sure all of your shipping and billing information is correct. We will bill and ship as soon as they arrive."

Hopefully Chuck will get his around the same time.  ;D

[Iain]

We have been told the Challengers are on the water.

If they float then I would be worried about Tractive Effort.

[John]

I hope they are worth the wait ..

I personally am not getting one now .. I changed my mind and picked up a couple of Kato SD70Ms instead .. along with a bunch of other stuff .. Chuck had to make a car payment or something

[Nato]

  Oh really! You mean I can finally retire my 5 Rivarossi Plastic and my four early Key Imports Nakamuria of Japan Brass ones for the one Sound Equiped Athearn I have had on reserve for trhe past decade at Caboose Hobbies.                                                                                                                     Nate Goodman (Nato). Salt Lake, Utah .

[tom mann]

I hope they are worth the wait ..

I personally am not getting one now .. I changed my mind and picked up a couple of Kato SD70Ms instead .. along with a bunch of other stuff .. Chuck had to make a car payment or something

Crap, I was hoping to see it on your layout.

[3rdrail]

Charlie Vlk just dropped a bomb on the Atlas forum about these for those planning to use these on DC layouts. Rather than responding to the throttle contained on the power pack, the DC user will have to set his or her throttle at maximum voltage and control the Challenger using the furnished remote control. Sort of eliminates using it with any other DC locomotives on a layout, doesn't it?

I suspect many will be returned when non-DCC buyers get them home. 

I though Athearn was smart to just offer one version at first, but that was before I was aware of this little FUBAR. I have no need for a Challenger and hadn't ordered one, but on hearing this, I would cancel if I had. 

[John]

I get the feeling the majority of people buying these will be DCC guys .. in which case this won't matter ..

[tokenbrit]

Am I missing something - this is a problem only if you're looking to double-head in DC, isn't it?

Short of releasing DC & DCC versions separately, I don't see any other way that Athearn could design it: the "furnished remote control" will just attenuate a maximum voltage & speed - it's not like you can remote control a voltage increase...

Also, quite a few will be shelf/yard queens, or excursion specials run on their own I would have thought - I wouldn't cancel because of this, but that's just me

[Robbman]

Message deleted

[wcfn100]

Let's be careful. I know Charlie is a good reliable source, but I'm not convinced that what 3rdrail posted is entirely true.  I think what you're talking about is if you want to use the sound with DC then you need the controller and to crank the voltage. If you plan to run on DC without the sound, then I think you'll be ok.  I could be way off so I emailed Athearn about it. Hopefully they will answer.


Jason

[Nato]

   I don't have any problem on my layout, both main lines, the branch and the yard each have their own radiolinked wireless throttles, so my challenger running with the factory supplyed controler will only be running on one line. Radio wirless throttles are the poor mans DCC when you have ove a hundred some locos to convert to DCC ,however if the club you belong to is going DCC then you must convert a certain numbers of your locomotives to DCC for show use or better yet go with Infared Rail Lynx,no complex wiring, just a few repeaters to locate on your layouts, and decoders small enough to fit in N locos are finally available, but I don't want to bring up that can of worms as Rail Lynx created a flame war on another list about a year ago.                                                                                                     Nate Goodman (Nato). Salt Lake, Utah .

[up1950s]

One could always strip out the guts and rewire it as a muted DC only loco if it pulls well . 

[up1950s]

Glenn G. Poole has a post on the Atlas thread that says it runs on the Analog powerpack just as a normal non DC engine runs .

[John]

I think it is very important that you do your own research on this particular issue. I would not cancel an order if you really want one based on what appears to be contradictory or inacurate information on the forums. Some of the stuff floating around the boards on this is pure speculation and has little merit. Remember, these people have been wrong before.

[gunner]

 I wouldn't be so concerned about the electronics in most any model, The advances in this field have done our hobby no harm, the LED's in todays constant intensity, lights only lit in the direction of travel boards are much better than the Grain of Wheat lamps that burned out all to frequently.  Split frames and improved pick up are also products of the engineering advances in our hobby.  Some may blast instead of bless these changes, but I haven't heard too many people fuss about the Kato and Atlas models of the past 5 years, the Spectrum J Class isn't too bad either.  Since I run buth DC and DCC interchangeably; I will be getting one of these.  I can't see Athearn not going with NMRA DCC Standards, so if you have doubts about the ability to run this model on DC, Leave it alone, but for those on the fence... Read their specifications.  The web site says that it automatically senses the presence of DCC or DC and all of their HO stuff has been NMRA compliant.

 Lets give Athearn a chance to get this one to market before we decide if or how bad they messed up. 

Bob