Athearn Undecorated Airslides - an interesting solution.

[wcfn100]

For anyone interested, Athearn airslide undecs come as two cases.  The first has the trucks on the center sil, the main body and the roof sans hatches.  The second case contains two baggies, one with the plastic sprues and the other with the etched parts.

Did the cabooses come like this too? (Anyone else even buy undecs anymore?)


Jason

[Mark5]

Did the cabooses come like this too? (Anyone else even buy undecs anymore?)

Jason

On the cabooses, the website says:
Although this undecorated model is in our Athearn N line it comes either unassembled or partially assembled in order to ease the painting process

On undecs I buy undecs when 1) the model is not available in the scheme I want and 2) the model is available in undec.

I have quite a number of undec diesels (some Kato even!) in various states of non-completion. :

To further complicate issues is another questions - are decals available for the scheme I want.

Unfortunately, the trend is away from undecs, so I get stuck trying to find models with the least complicated schemes to ease stripping.

[James Costello]

Did the cabooses come like this too? (Anyone else even buy undecs anymore?)
Jason

Yes it did.

[wm3798]

I looked it up in my history book.  I believe the term they used to use for this sort of thing is "kit".  It implies that the purchaser actually has to expend a certain amount of effort in order to achieve a rail-ready finished product.  I thought these things only existed in mythology, but apparently Athearn has discovered a pocket of modelers are willing and able to do more than swipe a credit card!

Lee

[ai5629]

I received my undecorated Athearn Airslides today, and three out of the four had damaged bodies.  The damage was not visible looking at the cars through the jewel case since the factory faced the damaged side down.  I hope I can get replacements since I ordered PRR H40 decals from Danial Kohlberg to decal them with.  These cars lasted into the mid 80's in full PRR paint.  Thanks.

Jeff

[christoph]

Packing the damaged side down sounds familiar  

I have just received an Athearn covered hopper where the paint is real thin on one side, and has even what looks like a patch with a brush.  Some weathering with dirt and rust should help there.  So quality control is working, but not as we expected.... :

Happy New Year to all.

[ai5629]

I have several other of these Airslide cars (PC, ATSF and BN), and the bodies are fine.  I purchased some CNW cars, and the underframes were separated from the bodies.  I returned them and got my money back.  I called Athearn and the guy told me they had not heard of qc problems like this.  He wanted me to send him the cars, but I already sent them back to the etailer I bought them from.  I just hope I can get new cars since I really want to paint these up for the Pennsy. Thanks.

Jeff

[wcfn100]

The only thing (so far) that I noticed on mine is that the roofs were cut off the sprue very close to the edge which leaves a small void along the bottom edge of the roof.

I don't know how much of a problem this will be.


Jason