I have a question about the cupola caboose of this set, top right in the picture. Should it read SPSF, coming from Athearn, because this picture looks like the PS was painted over, both in the logo and in the roadnumber area. If there is anyone with this set ,that can help clarify this for me, it would be great, thanks.
Questions was: Should it read SPSF, coming from Athearn, because this picture looks like the PS was painted over?
No, Athearn intentionally painted it with the “PS” omitted and with the darker red “overpaint” color to match the prototype. If you read the informational flyer that came with the set the last paragraph reads “Santa Fe Ce-1 999088 was the first caboose painted, on April 25, 1986. It wore full SPSF lettering, but the middle letters were quickly painted over.”
As additional info, if you run across Athearn’s “Thunder Valley” train set produced only in 1998 and sold as Item 1035, it contained a Santa Fe “Kodachrome” GP-50 and a 34’ cupola caboose like the one in your Special Edition Set 2325 except the reporting mark is 999528 and it has “SF” with no space between the S and F, and the “SF” is in the position where the “PS” would have been on the cupola caboose in S/E 2325. If you are interested in seeing a photo of the caboose that was in the train set, let me know and I’ll eMail you one as I haven’t taken the time yet to go thru the steps to include a photo in these posts.
Al, Redding CA
I have this set to.
I aquired it when I was on a brief kick and strongly considering modeling the BN (Former CB&Q/C&S)-D&RGW-ATSF Joint Line. But I soon moved to my present location and a CNW Themed layout was soon started. (Actually the concept was a Shortline Running on Former CNW track. But maintained CNW lettered locomotives and Rolling Stock on the property for historical interests. Any Non CNW owned types were lettered for the Lander Northwestern (LNW)
Now I am modeling the Great Northern.
James
thats cool info to know
You can view another picture of caboose SE 2325 set at the link below. Within this gallery are pictures of over 100 train sets sold by Athearn durring the last 40 years. Unfortunately, there is not a picture of the Thunder Valley Train Set posted there yet. Also within the galleries are over a 1000 pictures of different Athearn made train cars. There should be more pictures added to the Athearn Gallery in the near future.
http://hoseeker.net/swapgallery/maingallerypage
If any Athearn or other HO train collectors would like to post pictures at HOseeker.net contact me off list about details. I built this site to help other modelers repair and identify HO train.
Larry
http://www.hoseeker.net/
Thanks for the informantion.