New Athearn Stuff

[ljudice]

If you go to horizonhobby.com and click on N-trains, then  "new", you will see they are doing more Ethanol cars (in a number of new roadnames) + weathered 57' mech refrigerator cars...

[tom mann]

weathered 57' mech refrigerator cars...

Cool...looks like I can retire! 

[Mark5]

Athearn eh?

[sirenwerks]

I realize I am being a curmudgeon, but I think we should reserve the word "new" to an innovation in product, and not just another paint job. Athearn remains pretty disappointing in N at this point, IMHO. So much in there HO product line that could be used in N, and so few releases.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I have to disagree, I think new paint schemes count as "new", but I wish we'd see more.

I know they seemed to have made a push a few months ago on a bunch of stuff, and I gave them quite a few dollars (I love their Railbox cars, and other 50' boxes).

I'd love to see more schemes on those.

I would like to see more of their HO line in N, but I also know Rome was not built in a day.

[Allentown Hump]

I'm pretty certain that those Ethanol tank cars are bogus. I believe that UTLX is the only owner of the cars that the Athearn model represents. I could be wrong, but I wouldn't mind seeing photos...

[Mark5]

I'm beginning to think that Athearn is going to sit on the MDC peaked end hopper tooling (the car on the right) until PCM releases their H2a ...




and that could be a very long time ...  :

[wm3798]

Are the hoppers dead on accurate?  I know the 70 tonners MDC did for the WM are a bit off, but I'd love to see them re-done just the same.  I hope we're not scaring them from wading into deep end with something that won't satisfy the blogisphere.  Something like a coal hopper isn't worth all the hair splitting,  if you ask me.  There are sooo many variations, even on individual roads, that getting a car right for one would preclude  making money on the model by running other road names for folks like me who just want 200 hoppers that look right from 3 feet away.

Lee

[Mark5]

Are the hoppers dead on accurate?  I know the 70 tonners MDC did for the WM are a bit off, but I'd love to see them re-done just the same.

Accurate for N&W? Not even close. But a far more accurate triple than anything else that is out there prior to the 100 ton triple design (Atlas/M-T/Lifelike). They can be best likened to N&W's H2a class (which lasted well into the 1980s in numbers).

With few minor exceptions, all N&W open hoppers built from the 1930s up to the first 100 tonners (intially rated at 90 tons) had peaked ends.

[Allentown Hump]

Well, all of the new Ethanol cars a bogus...  :

Four of the six cars are built by Trinity, one was built by ACF. Crack open the .pdf artwork and look at the built dates of these things. Athearn claims that in their features that these tank cars are for "2005-Now", meanwhile, the ACF one is listed as '93, the CHS as '99 and the DODX as '70! All of these paint schemes are COMPLETELY bogus for this car! Is Athearn becoming the next Micro-Trains when it comes to "close enough"?

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I hate to say this, but I'll go for right general body style any day.

But I still maintain there's a big difference between solid and open decks.

[daniel_leavitt2000]

Can anyone please pinpoint the difference between these ethonal cars and earlier versions?

[Allentown Hump]

I'm not going to go too far into it, but just to list a few, the saddle, the manway, the dome arrangements and the outlets are all different.

Trinity


Union Tank

[sirenwerks]

So does Athearn's ethanol car match anything else out there closer than what they're forcing it at?

[Walkercolt]

The Athearn car is about 90-95% accurate for an alcohol tanker. For anything else, it's an acceptable to OK stand-in for many other cars. It's a b*tch to make a truely accurate tanker,because each product uses a differnt tankcar...manways are different, pressure relief valves are different, unloading valves are in different places, many "heavy liquids" are carried in "funnel flow" or "hot-dog" tankers, the density of the product determines the lenght of the car. We really should be grateful for the half dozen tankers we have(incuding the Con-Cor cars). Even in HO, many of their cars are "stand-ins", with a few accurate cars (usually at premium prices). The Atlas cars are among the best cars out there, even though Kaoilin or corn syrup cars my not be your thing.