One Modeler's Ranking of HO Scale Locomotives

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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Hello Everyone,

I have been noticing recently that alot of newcomers have visited this site recently. I felt the time was right to dust this thing off, tweak it a little, and let it out for another spin.

Well without further interuption my locomotive rankings. Note this ranking is soley my personal opinion based on experiences with these brands though my own personal modeling, membership in three model railroad clubs, and my custom painting business.

My ranking of locomotive manufactures in according to performance and detail.

  1. Broadway Limited. Move over Overland. The king has been overthrown. Broadway Limited simply makes the best model locomotives money can buy. And they cost one fifth the price of their closest competitor, Overland Models. By comparison, Overland is now overpriced scrap metal. I would also like to announce that thanks to Broadway Limited, The souls of many a legendary steam locomotive have been saved from certain doom granting a gloryous opprotunity for those who missed out. Through careful planning and reasearch, the Age of Steam now lives on in the glorious time machine of Model Railroading. All models come with Built in Dual mode DCC and Sound.

  2. Proto 2000/1000. The second best a modeler can buy. Ruged, dependable, well detailed, and any model can be configured to match specific prototype. Easy on the pocket book to. All Models DCC Ready.

  3. Atlas. Before any loco manufacturor did anything, Atlas did it first. First with can motors. first with flywheels, first with the now standard split frame chassis. First to be DCC ready, and the first to be DCC equiped. (Though Broadway Limited beat them to the puch with sound) A very good buy for any modeler. Atlas locomotives are built like a rock, and with the precicion of a swiss watch thanks to the exellent engineering of Roco of Austria. Though being the pioneers that have shown the way ahead so many times, their models compared to BLI and Proto have a few minor k

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It’s an excellent hands on analysis predicated on experience.
My only recommendation folks; hit your print key.

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My rankings of HO diesels, based on models I’ve bought within the last two years:

(Broadway not included as I don’t have any to compare)

  1. Atlas Master - far superior detail and drive than P2K, better detail than Kato. The best of the plastic. (BTW, there IS a difference between Atlas Classic and Master locos - it’s not just the decoder! Not as great as between P2K and P1K, but there.)

  2. Kato - superior drive, detail not as good as Atlas Masters.

  3. Life-like P2K - great detail, but no way as good as an Atlas Master, drive not as good as Atlas Master or Kato.

  4. (tie) Stewart - great drive, detail not as good as P2K
    Athearn Genesis - drive not as good as those above, detail better than Stewart.

  5. Atlas Classic - good drive, detail not as good as Master

  6. LL P1K - good drive, detail not as good as Classic

  7. Athearn RTR

  8. Athearn BB

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gbailey,

Your rankings are closer to the way I would rank the Diesel loco manufacturers with the exception of Broadway inserted third.

For steam locos, Broadway would move to first with the older Heritage series a very close second. Genesis would be third.

Student of The Big Sky Blue’s analysis is very good, but my rankings differ when diesel and steam are seperated.

Jay

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Hey James, where’s Rivarossi? Their new re-tooled steamers are the best money can buy, IMHO.

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I have had only one experience with a Rivorossi Locomotive and It is somewhat of a dated creature. Modern Rivorossi is vastly different from piece I regularly maintain. (It is owned by my grandfather) That I can not honestly give my opinion of them in proper context.

And as should be mentioned, this is soley my personal opinion. If any you disagree with me, fine. Im just trying to give the raw recruits good advice, not start a debate.

Thanks again.

James

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Yeah, they would be nice if they were reliable too. Apparently, BLI steam isn’t built for the long run. Major problems develope somtime between 1day to 5 months. Alot of mysterious short circuits. [sigh]

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My take:

  1. Atlas Master. Kato quality drive with Genesis level details.
  2. Athearn Genesis. Great details, good drive, great paint. Steam are poor pullers.
  3. Kato. Good details decent paint, great drive
  4. Intermountain. Good details & drive
  5. Proto1000DX. Great details, good drive. Some driveline problems
  6. Proto2000. Great details, good drive, some driveline problems and detail accuracy is variable.
  7. Atlas Classic. Good drive, decent details, but not stellar.
  8. Stewart. Good drive, decent details.
  9. Proto1000. good drive & details, some driveline issues.
  10. Athearn RTR. decent drive, lack discrete detail, good basis for projects. Excellent for beginners.
  11. Walthers Trainline. OK drive, good for beginners. Only source for adequate versions of some units.
  12. Athearn Bluebox. OK drive, poor handrails, otherwise much like RTR.
  13. Bachmann Spectrum. Variable quality, OK to poor drives. Steam is gems though.
  14. AHM/IHC/Tyco/Life-Like: Cheap junk, sometimes with promise for a major project. IHC Steam can be decent.

Thee apply only to Diesels. Steam ranking changes significantly.

And Proto1000DX units are Canadian Prototypes of almost P2K detail level. More accurate on average than the P2K’s though.

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My experience with P2K locomotives that I’ve had and operated regularly since 1996 is they do not age as well as Kato or Atlas locomotives.

All of my SD9 P2K locos (I have 13 of them) have developed serious power pickup problems. I have tracked the issue down to the copper side plates used in the trucks. Copper is a rather soft metal, and the plates have the axle holes stamped out. The power path to the motor depends on the ends of the axles make contact with the copper plate.

As the P2Ks wear, the copper plate axle holes develop more slop and the power pickup becomes steadily worse. The permanent fix seems to be adding railhead wipers to the copper plates so you don’t need to depend on the wheels at all for power.

My Kato and Atlas locomotives of similar age have not developed pickup problems like this. So even though Kato and Atlas locos generally cost more, you get what you pay for.

P2k Locos look nice, but in my experience, their performance drops dramatically with age.

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I go back and forth on my #1. It is somewhere between Atlas, Kato and Athearn Genesis (diesels only). If we could only get the best each has to offer, we would truly have a great engine. I would cobble them as:

  1. Kato drive
  2. Atlas Master detail
  3. Genesis detail that Atlas can match

I like the Proto detail, but I’m not wild about the drives.

As for older units, you can’t beat an Atlas unit with a Kato drive, or a Stewart unit with a Kato drive. These are great starter projects. The shell quality is not on par with today’s offerings, but a little detail can bring the quality up real fast, and of course you have the smooth Kato drives.

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Ok,Just for fun and of course my opinion.[:D]
1.Atlas…These are the best units made.
2.Atlas/Kato…A old standby that still ranks among the best made.[:D]
3.P2K.Had 11 of my units to fall victim to the old crack gear problem…Cleaned out that ton of grease in my other units and have not suffered any more crack gears.I have 38.
4.Genesis…I run these units at the club and find them to be among the best made.
5.Athearn RTR…Love those CF7s[:D]
6.Athearn BB Still the best bang for the buck in their class.
7.Kato-Mostly because the only units they make I can use is the GP35 & NW2.[;)] My 4 GP35s are sweet runners detail matches Atlas and Genesis.
8.Stewart.Only have 2…So,I can’t judge these units fairly.
9.Walthers-GP15.Don’t know about the other Walther’s Train Line locos…I only have 3 GP15s.Very smooth runners and been trouble free to date…

My Preferences are Atlas,Atlas/Kato,P2K,Athearn BB and the RTR CF7s.and the Walther’s GP15 and of course my 4 Kato GP35s.[8D][:D]

As a side note and for general information… [:D] Atlas was not the first to use flywheels…Hobbytown of Boston used flywheels on their diesel drives starting in the late 50s.Then Athearn in the 60s started to use flywheels.The first PLASTIC highly detailed locomotive and one could say the forerunner of today highly detailed locomotives would the Life Likes first P2K unit…The BL2… The first smoothest running plastic engine from the box would be Athearn(60s) and then Atlas…Again this is just for general information.[:D]…Much of the hobby’s advancement in locomotive drives is due to Athearn and Atlas both of course in their own class.[:D] You see every drive we have today is based on the Athearn drive of the 60s with refinements and improvements…[:smiley:

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On my model railroad in the Atlas Roco days they ran a hell of a lot better than any BB ever will Atlas Roco is why i made it in the hobby.

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Several Members of my round robin club have had BLI locomotives well over a year, with only one incident to report. One members Class A suddenly stopped working. Upon calling the manufacturor he was told that the motor manufacturor had made a bad lot of motors and it the warning signs did not show up until well after the locomotives had been produced and sold. After sending the Class A back to BLI, they promptly fixed it the promblem, (with a refreshingly pleasent customer service attitude as well I might add.) and the locomotive has logged several hundred scale miles ever since on this members railroad. So if your BLI unit develops a problem, call them up. I am sure they will be more than happy to help you.

James

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James,

I am only talking about steam locomotives. I think that one has to decide which criteria one is going to give the most weight in a comparison. While I don’t own a lot of brass, many of my friends do. I think many people buy brass for different reasons than one might buy a BLI/P2k/Spectrum loco. One reason is that they need a specific, obscure model that will never be mass produced in large quantities in plastic (consider the plight of the narrow guage modeler). In this case, often limited run brass is the only game in town. Another reason is that people like to collect brass, like one might collect coins or stamps. Most of these guys never run the locos, so DCC, sound and running chacteristics are irrelevant to them.

I still think that most modern brass locos have the best detail available. In the example of the cab forwards: Look at any of Overland’s cab forwards and compare the detail of BLI. BLI is is good, but not as detailed as Overland. The Spectrum Shays and my P2K engines have finer detail than the BLI (but not as good as brass), so I rate the BLI good in this catregory.

As for running I haven’t seen any of the recent offerings from Overland run, but I know the BLI stuff runs well. Old brass (with certain exceptions) runs notoriously poorly out of the box… My Spectrum and P2K stuff runs smoother than the BLI, so on running I rate BLI very good, maybe not best.

However when you look at value (presuming you want sound and DCC), I think BLI wins. With most new brass starting at over $1000.00, $250.00 for a DCC, sound equipped loco that runs very well and sounds/looks good is a sweet deal…P2k and Spectrum are less expensive but when you add in the cost of decoders and sound they come out more expensive than BLI offerings.

I don’t have a huge amount of hours on my stuff, so I’m not sure how I would change these rankings after running for 10 years. I didn’t include brass in my rankings because it is so variable, and

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Every on of my P2K’s has had split gear problems. I prefer Atlas and athearn

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Todd; then replace the gears…Athearn ones will work, but the “best” technical solution - and most expensive, is to replace the wheels and gears with NWSL.

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Ranking manufacturers is not a very effective method, especially without defining the criteria. Below is soley HO scale.

For prototype fidelity, the LL P1K RS2 is near the top, as high as any P2K, and higher than most. The more recent P2K RS11 is not very close, barely an improvement over the Atlas Classic Series RS11.

For operation, most Kato and all Atlas models built by Kato are excellent, Kato’s NW2 and SD40-2 in HO are not very good, without modification.

The Kato built Altas Alco’s with the plastic walkways have issues when pulling heavy loads: the walkways deflect, so much so that the couplers will move half a shank height or more. The modifications to solve this are not difficult.

There have been some complaints about surging when MUing Atlas Master Series, the reality of this is that it is realistic - take a look at real trains. It can be reduced somewhat by reducing the back lash in the drivertrain of the locomotive, and increasing the frictional drag of the train. With a real train, the engineer applies the brakes to the train going down grade to stretch out the slack to reduce the surging. There currently is not a method to do this in HO scale trains.

Bottom line, the manufacturer/importer does not matter if the model is what you want.

I have locomotives from Altas, Athearn, Bachmann, Bear, BLI, Bowser, Life Like, Mantua, MRC-Lima, Rivarossi, LMB, NWSL, Oriental, and others.

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  1. Broadway Limited. Once they get all of the bugs out of their electrical problems, they’ll definently be my favorite.

  2. Athearn Genesis. You can;t beat those F-units!

  3. Atlas. Good products, but they need to make steamers, as well as those early Alcos!

  4. Proto 2000. Their steamers are even more detailed than BLi’s, but their cost added to sound and/or DCC would make them very expensive compared to their competitors.

I have models from Genesis and (soon) BLI, I have looked at the Life Like and Atlas models (If Atlas has a re-run of the RI RS-1 in red, silver, and black, it’s mine!)

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P2K better than Atlas?! Athearn better than Kato?!

Humph! Not in my world…

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Just to resond to a lot of comments at once.

In regard’s to Trainnut1250’s comments about brass. He is entirely correct. I do not own alot of brass iether, but due to my custom paint business I get to handle it and evaluate it often. While I personaly feel that most brass items are way over priced, on the criteriea of performance and detail every Overland piece I have had the chance to handle has been near the top. But as trainnut1250 has noted. Brass is more for a collector’s nich and a source for modelers needing specialty items. (LIke a C&S Narrow gauge 2-6-0) Due to its High Prices I have placed it as a mention down at the bottom of my list becasue I recognise that most model railraoders will never be lucky eneugh to even see an Overland Locomotive, let alone own one.

In response to nfmisso, my ranking of locomotives is strictly in HO scale, and the criterea for judging is MY OPINION of performance and detail. Everyone is welcome to throw their own rankings, but please stop trying to have a debate with me.

Then in respnse to Mr. McWilliam, I have to agree with nfmisso, replace them with iethe athearn, Proto Power West, or Northwest Shortline Gears. It is a simple process really. I expect that all but the rawest beginner should be able to take a locomotive apart and put it back together. Its a proud tradition of the hobby that is model railroading. Or did this become Modeling of Railroads and I not notice?

Alright as a little aside. I have a homework assignment for you all.

Take two perfectly good locomotives. your choice of detail parts, and cut and hack, and glue and paint, until something original and unique comes out. I got dibs on GN’s SDP40 with the BB span bolstered rear truck. Anyone want to tackle an SD45T-2?

James