I’m thinking of buying a few of these but I am concerned about their tracking qualities. I have a couple of older Athearn cars and they are very prone to derailing. Are the Walthers cars any better?
Thanks…
As long as you have at least a 24" radius you should not have any problems , my athearn cars were fine 24" and higher and I am sure the walthers are the same .
I have a 27" min. on my mainline. The draft gear on the Athearn cars seems poorly designed though. Too much binding on the long drawbar. I was wondering if the Walthers cars are designed any better.
The Walthers Hi-Cubes are MUCH better than the old Athearn ones. I’ve been gradually retiring all my blueboxes and replacing them with Walthers, the Athearns kept derailing for no good reason - even on my 30" curves. No probs whatsoever with the Walthers…
Yeah bought one athearn 86’ hi-cube and will not buy another, i believe they are cursed.
Ive three of the new Walthers B&O Monsters. Believe it or not I think I can shoe horn them into the shipping area across TWO sets of crossovers but havent tried it yet. That day will come.
Athearns are obselete for this class of car and are being replaced with these Walthers Cars. I do keep a couple of athearns on hand as a gigantic “Will it fit” calculator with the couplers removed.
Both the Athearn and Walters cars are needed as they are different prototypes, the Athearn car is a somewhat Greenville car and the Walthers car is a Pullman-Standard car.
On the Athearn cars I have junked their coupler drawbar and mounted the coupler directly to the body in an extended coupler box with a long shank coupler and had no problem with them on our club layout in Anchorage, even on the small radius curves.
Rick
Thanks for all the input guys, I think I’ll go ahead and order those high cubes. I was looking at some walthers passenger cars I have, and if the big high cubes have the same coupler/drawbar arrangement I’m sure they will be fine. The trouble with the old Athearn high cubes is their “add-on” type of drawbar. It binds against both the truck, and the extended center sill. It takes lots of fussy filing/sanding/fitting/lubrication to get these dinosaurs to operate reliably. I ran a string of Walthers passenger cars backwards through my most difficult yard trackage at high speed and was impressed at the results. Not as much as one wheel on the ground.
I have found that if you sand down the drawbar thickness, and trim the nubs away from the truck a bit, the tracking of the Athearn cars will improve.(Make sure there isn’t any “flash” interfering). Some Kadee graphite dry lube helps as well.
Also, the Walthers swivel coupler pocket on their Hi-Cube cars is available as a seperate part and can be attached to the Athearn car getting rid of the coupler/connection to the truck that affects the car operation.
Rick
The Athearn cars are quite easy to fix provided you know what the problem is. On all Athearn cars the sheet metal weights are sheared from larger sheetsof soft steel. The shear acts like a pair of scissors and bends the weight a little. On 86’ cars this is a disaster. On shorter cars all it does is force the coupler box a little lower. Here is the fix. Before assembling any Athearn car place the wieght on a flat surface. You will detect a bend in it.Turn the weight so it is supported by the two ends and press down with your fingers to straighten it. In a severe case you may need to press realy hard to straighten the weight. Now when installed those arms will not hang up on the underframe being pushed down by a bent weight. On shorter cars the coupler pockets will now all be at the same height. Problems solved.
You might be gettiing derailment issues with the Athearns due to to their length and weight. They should weigh somewhere around 7-8oz minimum per the NMRA RP. I usually make mine a bit heavier