Athearn hears a who, or if a tree falls in the forest

[Mark5]

hardly a peep from Athearn of late (last email I got from them was what? June?).

Except for the UP steamers product announcements seem to have gone to a steady trickle ...

meanwhile in HO, new SD45s, hi-nose even!

http://www.athearn.com/Search/Default.aspx?SearchTerm=SD45+RTR&CatID=THLD&NYA=1

Personally I'd like to see them do more rolling stock, as I have yet to be sold on their locos (although the new steam seems good, I have no interest in the Big Boy or Challengers).

[sirenwerks]

I got an announcement email from them last week. "New" is weathered freight cars. Too bad there isn't an emoticon for "finger spinning in air as if I care", 'cause that's what I think of that idea.

[up1950s]

If their freight cars come with the dip or electrostatic paint job that was applied to those mill gon's , I am not in any rush to see them .

[Mark5]

I got an announcement email from them last week. "New" is weathered freight cars. Too bad there isn't an emoticon for "finger spinning in air as if I care", 'cause that's what I think of that idea.

Maybe they deleted me from their list - I haven't gotten any emails in months.

[bsoplinger]

You just might be deleted, as I get an announcement about once a month from them.

I was underwhelmed with the idea of factory weathered rolling stock, but then again, there are those $50 built up DPM buildings  :

[Allentown Hump]

They're just sitting there trying to figure out what other bogus paint schemes that they can put on the completely wrong car...

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Are they moving to Oregon too?

[sirenwerks]

Are they moving to Oregon too?

That might not be a bad thing, as they would be consistently be reminded that they're slacking on releasing the PACCAR box cars in N, since the prototype's so much more prevalent around Oigon than LA-la-land.

[ednadolski]

I was underwhelmed with the idea of factory weathered rolling stock

It's a nice idea but some things are better in theory than in practice.  Their implementation of this looks like just a uniform spray of grime across the lower 1/3 of  the carbody.  Not terribly realistic, esp if the same such weathering is on +20 consecutive cars on a train.

I wish they would do stuff like using slightly dulled/faded colors for the factory paint (esp. for colors that fade a lot like some blues).  But leave room to let the modelers add additional fading, grime, rust, etc. as desired.

For N scale tho it seems like it would be sort of silly for mfr's to offer factory-weathered cars, ostensibly for realism, but then still make them with high-riders, pizza-cutters, and truck-mounted couplers to negotiate unrealistically tight curves (just a bit of the elephant in the room, IMHO).

[Walkercolt]

The high-riders, pizza cutters and truck mounted couplers work just fine for the big majority of people who have small-tiny layouts instead of none at all because of N-scale. I'd hate to tell you how many UniTrack K-1's and now V-6 sets we've sold. A heck of lot more than cases of Atlas flex track. Most people choose N-scale because of limited space. I know I did. High riders, pizza cutters, and truck mounted couplers look just fine from 3' on an N-TRAK layout when the train's a hundred (or more) cars long. At shows,we get about ten to twenty times the traffic the HO modular groups do. It's hard to run our trains for answering all the questions we're asked. What do you want? Shelf-queen contest models or to run trains for hours(or DAYS) at a time? I like to run trains, even if they aren't prototypically perfect. Just a few nit-pickers know the difference anyway, and most of them are wrong about the prototype they're complaining about: ie: "The Katy never had any GP-40-2"....wrong. They had about 50 at one time...I saw one on fire at Wagoner, OK. The crew were begging the fire Dept. NOT to put out the fire as it was the only engine(of three) running in the train. :

[sirenwerks]

Most people choose N-scale because of limited space. I know I did. High riders, pizza cutters, and truck mounted couplers look just fine from 3' on an N-TRAK layout when the train's a hundred (or more) cars long.... What do you want? Shelf-queen contest models or to run trains for hours(or DAYS) at a time?

Interesting, yet flawed, logic. As someone with limited space, I don't stand 3' from my models. I'm working on a shelf system because of space limitations where I have to stand so close I notice pizza cutters, overstated car-to-car spacing, and fake ballast. Call me silly, but it becomes difficult to suspend my visual acuity when it's been proven I can get performance from lo-pros, body mounts, and finer gauge, well- and realistically ballasted track. So I guess I will gladly stand close to my shelves and all of my models will have to be queens, but I'll maximize my enjoyment spending hours operating them, working them like dogs all the same. I think you're confusing train length, higher sales volume, etal with the length of something else.