November's Athearn news!

[wcfn100]

Go nuts.





Jason

[asarge]

Mighty slim pickings!! Actually HO had a pretty light month too. Not too worried at this tiem as with the delivery dates coincide with a general spring slow down in sales. Dealers could use a little bit of a break.

[wm3798]

Might have to look in to replacing those Wiking Mercedes trucks down at the Amstone terminal....

Lee

[Puddington]

zzzzzzzzzzz.. um...ah....snort....(Athearn announcements are out..... worth waking up for ?.....nah....) ....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...............

[up1950s]

Great news for those that want to decal their own without stripping .

[lock4244]

Oh fudge yeah! Fudgin sweet! About time!

Those poor saps modeling HO only have 2,800 new products announced. Suckers!

When the fudge are the LPG tankers going to be released or at least opened for pre-orders???

[Mark5]

I'm glad to see plain ones finally.

[bobcat]

Dealers could use a little bit of a break.

I guess all the dealers can go on spring break then. ???

What break? These guys need to make a liviing and they can't with this kind of announcement.

[Chulvis]

When the fudge are the LPG tankers going to be released or at least opened for pre-orders???

They will be open for pre-orders in December.

[lock4244]

When the fudge are the LPG tankers going to be released or at least opened for pre-orders???

They will be open for pre-orders in December.

So then... 6-8 months till they're at the LHS?

[asarge]

I guess all the dealers can go on spring break then

What break? These guys need to make a liviing and they can't with this kind of announcement.

Oh they get quite a living with what comes in anyways. But I would much rather have larger amounts of product arrive Oct-Feb. Sales reeally start to tail off late April/Early May as the weather improves and people get outside. Having not quite so much stuff come in during the slower months helps keep inventory from getting out of hand. Don't you worry, the pipelenin will be plenty full then too.

[sirenwerks]

Not to defend Athearn, but the recent covered hopper releases have been very welcome. Of course, being unemployed, I'm not buying any of them.

Yet, it would be nice to see the N scale releases be on a similar scale as HO. Athearn still has a way to go on that. I'm sure they'll dazzle us with something in the future but it's the in-between times like this announcement, that sucks large amounts of air, which make it quite clear they've got a lot of work to do to capture significant amounts of the N scale market like they have in HO. The funny thing is, that's what they want, consistent and meaningful sales from N scale. But like Walthers they fail to see the connection between product quantity and quality, and sales.

Funny, no? Nothing a 3rd year marketing student wouldn't see yet...

[Mark5]

Athearn has some cool stuff on the way ...


Body mounted couplers!


looks like truck mounts here


body mounts and logo plate

I'm still a bit apprehensive about the coming N&W peaked end hoppers ... they still haven't corrected the artwork on their website (they said they would). :

Athearn is purely a rolling stock thing for me. Their diesels have mostly sucked (The F45s are pretty good I hear though) and we'll probably see more UP steam (big deal) so it'll probably be a long time before I buy an Athearn diesel.

Unless of course I go to HO:



Mark

[wm3798]

Back in the day, we all hoped for there to be an "N Scale Athearn".  This was back when Uncle Irv was best known for keeping a steady diet of affordable, easy to build kits, and reasonably priced, reasonably good locomotives coming to HO scalers.  For awhile, it looked like Life Like might fill the bill for the locomotive market ($30 GP-20's anyone?) and MDC was locking in on the rolling stock kits.

When it was announced that Athearn was dipping their toes into N scale, then they went ahead and bought MDC, it was good news indeed... almost.  Unfortunately, the pendulum had swung away from kits and affordability and instead to RTR and overpriced detail.  MDC kits, which were a staple of my Conrail era fleet (however inaccurate they may have been) have since disappeared, and even the venerable Athearn Blue Box has died an unceremonious death.  Now that Life Like has been sucked into the Walthers field of gravity, all we've seen is warmed over offerings that are priced at two or three times what LL asked for them...

I do like what Athearn's been offering in N scale (generally) but I wish I could count on saving a few dollars and spending a few quality minutes at the work bench building freight cars...

Lee

[Ian MacMillan]

Can not wait for these!



to make modern versions of these