Author Topic: New Athearn Stuff  (Read 3607 times)

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wm3798

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Re: New Athearn Stuff
« Reply #15 on: September 21, 2007, 03:37:11 PM »
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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.

Yes, I'm willing to compromise on body style, as long as the coloring is right and the lettering looks like it belongs there... Yes, I'm directing more angst at the MT 33' hopper that's brown with too-small speedlettering.

Lee
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GonzoCRFan

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Re: New Athearn Stuff
« Reply #16 on: September 21, 2007, 11:15:01 PM »
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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"?

I imagine if a company made a model of a certain tankcar and only applied the schemes it actually wore in real life, they'd probably only be able to do a few schemes and might not recoup their investment, let alone make a profit. Aren't most tankcars built in very small batches for a specific commodity, with series sometimes only numbering a dozen cars or so? Tankers aren't something as simple as a 50' boxcar, they're highly-specialized with very subtle differences. I also bet Athearn is taking advantage of the fact that most consumers aren't knowledgeable about tankcar variations.

Also, this scale doesn't have nearly enough quality tankcar models, so I personally am willing to give manufacturers a little leeway, especially when the model is as nice as the Athearn ethanol tanker.
Sean

bsoplinger

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Re: New Athearn Stuff
« Reply #17 on: September 21, 2007, 11:54:59 PM »
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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 [picture removed]

Union Tank [picture removed]

I actually had to go back and forth a few times to convince myself that the differences I saw in the manway and dome arrangements were not due to the angle of the car in the photo being different. That's very 'close enough' in my book.

The main differences are in the underbody and that reminds me of the thoughts I have whenever I read articles in TKM or elsewhere that show so much time and effort made in superdetailing the underbody of a (HO scale) car ...

"but if you can see the bottom of any car I'm running I must be doing something way wrong"

Silly me, here I thought I was supposed to put the bottom down toward the rails. ::)

Ed Kapuscinski

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Re: New Athearn Stuff
« Reply #18 on: September 22, 2007, 01:46:02 AM »
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I'll say this though, while it isn't super important to me, I'm glad that it is to some people.

We do need standard bearers. I'm happy to not be one in this case though.