I’ve been looking at an Athearn Genesis GP 15-1 with Tsunami sound at my LHS. I’ve never owned a Genesis model but have had less than wonderful experience with an Athearn RTR GP 35. My other locos are either Atlas or P2K. Does anyone have one of these locos and, if so, what is your opinion of it’s quality and running characteristics. I would appreciate any information you would care to share.
Joe
The Athearn Gensis is thier top line and quite good. The RTR line is the old blue box line up with a few improvements. What issues did you have with them. The few RTR’s I have run fine. I looked at and ran one of the CNW GP15-1’s at the LHS. The sound was awsome, ran smooth and quiet. Only complaint is they come set with the strobe light programed to the wrong flash. The effect is for the Prime Stratolite digital flasher beacon and not the xenon strobe. This is easily fixed if you have DCC, the Tsunami supports single and the correct double flash xenon strobe effect, so its a simple CV change to correct this. If I could warrent them on my hilly coal line/oregon/washington state layout as I dual prototype model, I might pick up a couple. Now if we could get Athearn to do thier Alco RS 3 with sound and dcc onboard! Some of the models, any brand mind you, that come from China need a little tweaking or proper lubrication to run at thier best. Even my Atlas ones have had issues I had to address to bring operation up to what I expect. Kato still has the best running drives, hands down, others are close, many are blatent clones of them right down to the truck design. But none have the smoothness and coasting ablities. My Atlas Classis RSD5’s are smooth, but not as smooth as the older Atlas yellow box versions with the Kato drive in them. Cheers Mike
Mike:
Thanks for the comments. They ease my mind about a possible purchase. I did note on the Athearn website that there is a small problem with the ditch lights on the Norfolk Southern unit I’m considering and that it can be corrected by some CV changes. I’m glad to hear that the Genesis line is an significant improvement over the RTR line. My bad experience with them started out of the box with a mis-wired “quick plug”. After correcting that and replacing the bulbs with leds I had about a week of good running time. After that it developed a serious grinding noise which led to two complete tear downs, cleaning, removal of flash on the gears and rebuilds of the trucks and drive lines. Again it ran OK for a short while and then started screeching when in turns (22 to 26 inch radius). I pulled the motor and bench tested it and it ran OK until I put a slight sideways pressure on the shaft. This induced the noise so I again oiled the bearings and that seemed to cure the problem. It is now running again and I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I like the loco I just don’t like having to keep overhauling it. I’m used to having to do minor tweaking with new engines but this was a little extreme.
Joe
Maybe these will help, read this:
Watch this:
Also, I have an Athearn GP38-2 that was made in 2006 as DC. As a DC, it ran good with no problem and was probably the best running loco I had. Recently, I installed a Tsunami Soundtraxx decoder. It runs and sounds great! It pulls loads at about 50% of the power it did as DC. The BEMF is good and the motor noise is quiet.
Good Morning Joe,
Although I can’t specifically help you with the GP 15-1, I do have a great performing Athearn Genesis
SD70 ACe. The model lives up to all the hype associated with the Genesis Line. I’ve also had good luck with Athearn RTR locomotives, and have several in my “fleet”. Thus far they’ve been solid performers. Not debunking your disappointment with the problems you’ve encountered, guess they can and do happen.
PennCentral99: Thanks for the links. They were quite helpful. I missed them in my searching. Philcal: Thanks for your reply. Both of you have helped to push me over the hump to buy the loco. I’m really interested in comparing the Tsunami sound quality with that of my QSI equipped locos.
Joe