Recently I purchased some Atlas Dow of Canada tank cars.Now I see that Athearn has released the same car with a slightly color. On other forums( Atlas) others have stated that the Athearn releases on this and other cars in this particular release( Hudson Bay, Canada Starch etc.) do not have accurate paint renderings. Any thoughts on this. The Atlas cars are much more expensive. My question is …Who make the better product quality wise for the best price, Atheran or Atlas.I’d be interested in your comments.
I would have to say it’s strictly a matter of personal choice. If you are a truly prototypical modeler then I guess the closer you get to an accurate color is best for you, but if your weathering a piece of rolling stok how much does a perfect color match count? I know things like road numbers and details not prototypical to an era can be frustrating but again it’s all up to you. I have a friend who runs Athearn Blue box cars as 95% of his rolling stock. He weathers and details them all extensively changes couplers and wheel sets so they all look and run great. Another friend runs nothing but high end rolling stock such as Walthers, Intermountain, Kaydee etc. As they are all very fine pieces of rolling stock in all respects he pretty much runs them right out of the box. I run both, I throughly enjoy weathering and detailing so I don’t particularly do it to save money but rather just for the fun of it. Stricly my non professioanl opinion I would have to say Atlas cars are better detailed and run better but does it warrant the difference in price I don’t really know it’s all about how deep your pockets are.
Both…
Athearn RTR cars and Atlas RTR cars are about equal in looks and performance…
Both brands are needed to have a rounded freight car fleet…
So,in the end there is no versus in the overall grand scheme of things.
Is you question related to the accuracy of the paint job on the cars, or the accuracy of the model mechanically?
If the reporting marks on the cars is DCLX, you can find pictures of these cars on the following sites:
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/rsList.aspx?id=DCLX&cid=12 and
The car numbers are listed, so if you’re lucky you might even find a prototype for the models you have or are contemplating buyin
It all depends on the era you are modeling, the latest release of Athearn Tank cars are labeled from the 70’s to 90’s but the cars are painted so they could only be used in the 90’s due to the Chemtrac labels, COTS labels and the CAPY style of lettering that was used. Those would all have to be changed in order to use the cars in an earlier period.
Also, Atlas does a much better job of researching its paint schemes applied to the cars its produces, Athearn will paint any car anyway it chooses to increase sales.
Rick
A few thoughts, some already mentioned:
Paint colors don’t stay the same long in the real world of outdoors, so as long as its close, its right. Especially if you do ANY weathering. I only weather very lightly in most cases.
Athearn and Atlas both make great products and Atlas is a little picker about accuracy. Athearn is however generally a better value and it should be a item by item choice, depending on your own pickyness and budget. I buy either or both depending on the model.
I change all couplers to Kadee and most all trucks to Kadee w/Intermountain wheel sets, so any slight differences in coupler or truck quality are of no concern to me.
I don’t model the era of the car in question, but I must say, of the RTR stuff I buy, Athearn gets most of my business - but they have a broad product line in my era - 1953.
I have now found, in the great debate of RTR vs kits, that most Athearn RTR cars can be disassembled and kit bashed/detail improved (while preserving the factory paintjob) just like their kit counterparts. This is not as universally true of Atlas and others.
One of my favorite projects of this nature is the 50 flat w/2-25’ vans. I remove the forward axle from the vans, relocate the dolly wheels backward, cut the factory “floor mount” up to create seperate rub rails - then reglued to the flat car deck, install bridge plates and 5th wheel jacks, replace the trucks and couplers as discribed above - and WAH LAH, you have an inexpensive, convincing looking early piggyback car, in a dozen or more prototype or nearly prototype paint schemes.
By any other method or product selection, the cost and modeling time would be increased by a factor of 5 or 10. Granted, some of the other choices would be a little more accurate, but as a train of 35 of them goes by at 40 smph, these look just fine, and I needed about 100
ATLANTIC CENTRAL: That’s “Voilá” - it’s a french word. (roughly, “look there”). “wah lah” is just gibberish.
If the question is just about quality, well then Atlas is very good, and Athearn has a bit of a range. The athearn stuff will run good, but their RTR line is a mix of older crude blue box tooling repackaged as assembled, and newer tooling which is very nice (like the FMC 50’ boxcars, PS2600 covered hoppers, etc).
In regards to the specific tank cars asked about in the original question though, the colours on the Atlas car are better, and the body style of the Athearn car does not remotely match any of the DOW Canada, Canada Starch or Hudson Bay Oil and Gas cars that it is painted as. (In this case, the Atlas is also a bit of a stand-in, which they identify on their site. Athearn will paint up just about anything as long as it’s somewhat “close” and offer a fair number of “foobies” in their line.)
Thank you one and all. As always the forum is awesome. It is like belonging to a great big club with many layouts and hundreds of members.Enjoy your empires