Does anyone know at what point Athearn started adding factory fitted grabirons and sunshades to their GP38-2 models, and what the differences are between the latest RTR shells with grabirons and the ones from four or five years ago?
I’ve got a cheap ebay GP38-2 RTR, its not a Blue Box model, but it doesn’t have grabirons, so I plan to add aftermarket parts to remedy that, but before I go too far with this are there any other differences between the latest Athearn GP38-2 with all those new seperate details, and the older one?
I had assumed that the shell was updated from the Blue Box one when they switched over to RTR, was that not the case?
If the shell with seperate grabirons is an entirely new model, is there a replacement shell with these details available to fit the older chassis?
There was the earily run of assembeled BB GP38-2s with the plastic handrails and new drive line.Then later the “improved” GP38-2 hit the shelf with added wire grab irons.
I guess the shades are even newer than the seperate grabirons!
Sun shades are on the BNSF version of the GP38-2 as issued in the current ‘Iron Horse’ train set. http://www.athearn.com/Products/Default.aspx?ProdID=ATH78863 I’m not sure what they are made of, but I assume they must be metal or flexible plastic?
I have two of the Athearn GP38-2’s that I bought either late last year or early this year. One (undecorated) is a blue box model and the other (SF Kodachrome) is a RTR model. Both were bought about the same time, within a month of each other. The differences in them aren’t striking. The RTR model still had the blue box drive but the shell had details added that the blue box model didn’t even have in the box. These were mostly wire grab irons, mostly on the back of the long hood but there are a few up front on the short hood. It has the fans visible in the radiator grilles. The handrails are plastic whereas those on the blue box model are metal. Other than that the shells are basically the same.