Just a question to see if others have seen something similar.
While cleaning wheels on the club rolling stock, I found our highly reliable Athearn Challenger 4-6-6-4 had 2 traction tires on each of the 6-driver sets, but not on the same wheel sets. On the front engine driver set, there were traction tires on the front and rear drivers, both on the engineer's side, while on the back engine driver set, the traction tires are on the front and back drivers on the fireman's side.
Spookshow indicates that this model (late version with DCC and sound) had 2 traction tires per 6-wheel driver set, but both on the same wheel sets. "The forward drivers on the front engine are equipped with traction tires, as are the rear drivers on the back engine." "One driver pair per engine is geared (the ones with the traction tires)."
Is what I found something that sometimes happened from the factory? Or did somebody need to actually swap some wheels on the driver axles to end up with this configuration?
If it was a customer done swap, is there some known reason for doing that?
