I’ve notice that Athearn’s not making dummies any more. Doe’s anybody make them or is that a long ago practice?
It was much more economic. [:^)]
In Three rail O gauge, Lionel is (maybe along with MTH), but I don’t know about HO, N, or any of the other scales.
Athearn was the only maker that I knew of that made dummies. That seems to have stopped with the end of the Blue Box models. As far as I can tell, most modelers want to have both units powered. But of course, you have to be made of money to do this. LIONS do not have money. They give us a nice den to live in, and they put some meat in there for us to eat, and what more could we want.
But for the past 25 years, I have always used two power units on all trains. The run far more smoothly, with more power pickup. One can nudge the other if needed.
ROAR
I was at the Seashore Trolley Museum in Maine over the weekend. At the gift shop, they had Bowser trollies, both powered and unpowered. Not locomotives, but someone is making dummies, at least.
The dummies on my layout are all old Athearn Blue-Box models. Two of them are old rubber-band drive engines I’ve “neutered” so they now run as “honorary” locomotives in consists. I put sound-only decoders in them to give them something to do.
Walther’s I believe makes dummies in the Proto 2000 line. I have an E8 A/B set where the B is a dummy. It makes a lot of sense. I have another set where the B is powered. All the powered B does is add weight and take up energy. If I was maybe pulling on a huge layout then maybe it might make a difference. The non powered B didn’t need a decoder and is cheaper to make.
RMax
But, that also means there isn’t much profit in it.
I bought a GP-20 from Walthers last year. It’s one of their “Trainline” bargain models. The conventional wisdom is that these models, like the Proto-1000 series, have the same motors and drive trains as the top-end locomotives. But, this engine was DC, had a sparsely-detailed shell and didn’t even have a rear headlight. Walthers had them on sale for $40, while their high-end locomotives with DCC and sound will run $250 and up.
In these days of limited production runs, where customers want many different paint jobs and road numbers, why would a manufacturer use its limited production capacity to make low-profit items like dummy engines?
I remember reading somewhere that they don’t make dummies for N scale because as stated earlier people like their locos powered.
On my N scale layout, I always run all units as powered(2or4). That’s if you wanna pull long train. I never use any dummy units.
I notice on Ebay a lot of people list loco’s as in not running condition. They usually go fairly cheap. You could buy them, rip out the motor, weight, etc and get yourself a dummy.
Dummies make sense on smaller layouts pulling shorter trains, (up to 20 or so cars), on larger layouts, pulling 40 or more cars, power counts. All of my locos are powered, no dummies.
BLI sold a Blueline set of F7AB units just a few years back in which the B unit was a dummy.
I have two sets in the Santa Fe Warbonnet color scheme.
Rich
I wouldn’t know about the margin in the loco’s but I paid $249.95 for the DCC/sound version with powered A unit and dummy B. I have a set of both powered no DCC that I paid $209.95. I later converted to DCC with TCS decoders. Both sets are Proto 2000’s. The Proto 2000 E units have more than enough power to haul a decent train. Two powered units is just over kill. The same is true for a Proto 2000 SD9 that I run with an Athearn SD9 dummy. When I had my larger layout I would run the SD9’s and 20 freight cars with no issues. I put an TCS decoder in it also. This reminds me of a cartoon I saw in an issue of MR. Two guys talking and ones says to the other," you either need less cars or more track."
I do agree that it maybe a small market and a touchy one at that. When I am running the loop I like to have dummies. When switching it’s almost all powered. When working on a diorama scene I use dummies. There are cases for them.
RMax
RMax
Last I was aware, Athearn was still offering ‘blue box’ F7 sets with a powered A and dummy B (or one powered A and one dummy A). I don’t know if the dummy engines are available separately.
A nice thing about the Athearn dummies was if you wanted to change the railroad of your engine, you could buy a decorated dummy for $10-15 and just replace the body. Nice if you had spent time adding DCC to the motor / chassis, or putting in a new motor etc.
p.s. Stewart sells dummy chassis for their F units, and you can buy at least the undec shells separately too (I think?). However the dummy chassis is fairly pricey.
I’d hit the train shows. There have always been gobs of Blue Box dummies.
I just looked at the Bowser site. They still make them, especially in the old Stewart line of F units.
http://www.bowser-trains.com/In%20Stock%20Pages/In%20Stock%20Trad%20Diesel.htm#F%20Units
Yes, I had a power problem a few years ago. Too much power on the front of a train and too much DCC power consumption. I decided it was silly to run 5 powered units on the front when three powered units could easily pull the longest (65 car) train. It was also silly to install DCC decoders just for the heck of it. So I went through and gutted several of the units. In 4 unit consists the 2nd unit is a hollow shell for large speakers for the sound system. In 5 units consists the 2nd and 4th are not powered. the only problem with that is they need to be weighted a bit more than a normal car would be.
At the museum where I volunteer, we had a problem with trains (up to 85 cars) with 5-7 powered units on the front. One of the units would stop working and there was so much power the engineer could not tell. It end up getting drug around the entire layout developing flat spots on the non-rotating wheels. After replacing the wheels on a 4th locomotive a new rule came out and the museum issued flashlights. A stripe was painted on each loco wheel and it is a requirement to use the flashlight and check that all wheels are rotating after each start. An engineer that brings in a train with flat spotted loco wheels gets to pay for the replacement set.
Dummy units are definitely more rare than they used to be, since we’ve moved away from half amp and one amp motors. As has been pointed out already, Bowser still makes dummy units under the Stewart line, and I’ve seen dummy B units included with certain BLI, Proto 2000, and other diesel sets. I bought a dummy Stewart F unit not too long ago, detailed it, and milled out the frame for an old Lindsay motor truck.[:D]