As some of you are aware, I started, by the fact that I inherited some HO and N scale equipment from my dad.
The other day I was looking around in some of the boxes of stuff and found a loco, that is slightly odd.
The blue box is marked Athearn, and althow there is no date on it it it has on the end
3215 FW 14.98
Denver Rio Grande
F7A Super Geared RTR
While I agree this looks like a F7A ( as best as I can tell ) the thing that realy shocked me was the weight of the thing. It weighs in at a full 17.5 oz!
The wheeles look like they are all steel and all of them are proto-typicaly dark ( natural tarnish? ) , and the while it does work, it takes a bit of power, and throws sparks where the wheels meet the track while running, but handles questionable sections of track, even at full speed. There are also 4 small plastic nubs that look like they are to rub against the track.
Everything except the shell is metal of one sort or another. The box even contains what appears to be the original cardboard protector and the ties that secured the loco to it.
Is this a normal Athearn product or something else altogether?
Your written description matches the box information.
The original wheels are sintered iron. They provide a great deal of traction, but also retain and spread dirt, and have a tendency to spark. This model probably draws well over 1 amp in normal operation.
Normal supergeared F7 as it says. Pretty much the whole inside is filled with weight. The wheels are sintered bronze which are good for traction, but not so good for dirt. And yes they do spark especially on dirty track.
There’s actually nothing different about the gears compared to a normal BB Athearn loco - it’s that giant weight that makes the difference. Clean the wheels using the alcohol and Q-Tip method referred to in another thread. Once you’ve got the wheels clean, it will pull just about every car you’ve got. Caution if you are using it with DCC that allows a DC engine to also be used. I have one of these and it pulls 1.3 amps with a 25 car train. Make sure your DCC system, or DC transformer, will handle that kind of load.
Northwest Shortline makes replacement wheel sets for those Athern sintered wheels. I bought a few sets some years ago. They are plated with a shiney surface, and are a big improvment over the sintered cr-[oops] stuff.
I like the look of it and the way it feels in my hand - don’t know about changing the wheels for shiny nonproto-typical that I would have to turn around and darken again.
Now I have to figure out just what to do with it, it’s HO and I’m working with N.
Perhaps a forced perspective layout using both HO and N scale.
If you’re serious about doing forced perspective and you’re working in N Scale, then the HO scale would have to be closest to the front of the layout. I don’t think that would work; it’s simply to large. Otherwise, store the locomotive in a box, put it on a shelf and admire it, give it away, throw it away, whatever.
The wheels are sintered iron. Changing the wheels is the only way you’ll ever get it to run smoothly for more than a few minutes, and it’s quite a common practice for modelers to replace these wheels. Just paint the face of the wheels, but keep the paint off the treads. If you take the shell off, check to see whether it has the flywheel drive or the rubber belt drive, if it’s the latter it’ll be near impossible to ever get it to run smooth without more extensive tuneup work.
Between the Athearn rubber band drive and the flywheel drive was the super gear drive. Actually the super gear drive was in production at the same time as the flywheel drive, fora while. (I am referring to the F7 here). The sintered wheels were a big deal in their day because they were not brass. They do pull, though. If you dont want to hang on to it for sentimental reasons, give it away or sell it . It isnt worth messing with.
If you say so. It appears to run just fine on crappy Tyco track, and after a few min, it appeared to be doing even better - perhaps it just takes awaile.
It has flywheel drive. The electrical contacts appear to have some rust issues, but, I’ll take care of those when I have a spare hour to mess with the coupler.
Greg, I’ve never had a problem with the sintered iron wheels on any of my Athearn locos. While mine have all had can motors installed, the weak spot in your loco is that metal strap electrical distribution set-up. Get rid of the long strip across the top, then solder wires from the contacts on the trucks to those on the motor. She’ll run just fine and pull like crazy. [swg]
I wouldn’t exactly say that the Loco, is an HO orphan, OTOH, everything else ( with the exception of 3 PMI Pacific Fruit cars, is Tyco, and 95% of it is un-opened - including the layout expansion pack and and the “working” grain convair belt and piggyback loader.