Ready To Roll as soon as you fix it! do you have this problem with RTR stuff.
i have a bunch of RTR athearn stuff and almost all of it i hade to fix.
kinda wierd huh?
My youngest son is 6. Today in the hobby shop I was letting him and his older brother pick out a freight car. He had a R to R Athearn in his hands and said “I don’t want this one Dad, there is nothing to build” The brain washing is working!!
The only fixin’ I had to do with my Athearn RTR is change out the couplers to the Mchenry scale coupler…
I fine these cars are very free rollin’ and the only thing needed was like I said a change of couplers.
In many cases, RTR means “Ready to Rebuild” in order to get it to run. The most horrible model I have ever encounted was an Athearn RTR flat car with a Coca-Cola trailer on it. The wheelsets used blunt-pointed axles which could not be replaced with any other brand, and they rolled so poorly that it would have taken two engines to pull it up an incline just by itself – the wheels practically just slid along on the rail instead of turning. The couplers were no good, either, even though they were knuckle types. It would cost more to change trucks and couplers than what the car is worth, so it will just sit on a shelf and collect dust. No more Athearn RTR.
People keep talking about the “Athearn Growl” of their locomotives. Actually, what you’re hearing is Irv Athearn spinning in his grave upon seeing what has happened to his beloved company.
OK guys and gals. I’m a throw’in this out there and ya’ll can agree or disagree but, RTR or ready to roll stuff means that it is factory assembled is all. Just like anything else, it sometimes needs a little tweaking here and there to meet our standards. You buy a new car and chances are you will find some things that need adjusting, even though that car is sold ready to drive. RTR rolling stock is build on an assembly line by people that most likely are being paid piece work and probably know nothing about model railroading. The name of the game for them is numbers, not necessarily quality. With that said, if building kits is not your bag and you buy RTR rolling stock then you should not be surprised if you have to do a little adjusting here and there. Also keep in mind how far those products travel and how they travel. Having been in the freight hauling business for the past 47 years, I’m really amazed that they they get to us in one piece. For some freight handlers, FRAGLE means throw it! This is my 2 cents worth on this subject, thanks, Ken
As far as tweaking RTR cars sadly that includes the high dollar cars as well.60% of my Atlas cars I found the coupler height was 1/2 coupler to high according to my KD coupler gauge.Some of my RTR Inter Mountain cars was mixed.Some to high while others was to low.However,I maintain so far my Athearn RTR cars has been the best to date.
I’ve been lucky with all my Athearn and Atlas RTR cars so far. All I do is change out the coupler for a Kadee and put it on the layout. The odd time I do need to put a tiny washer in to adjust the coupler height. I’ve got 8 Intermountain cylinderical covered hoppers and of the 8 I had to fix 4 of them right out of the box. The coupler boxes broke off of 3 of them and 1 wheel was popped off. They were easy to fix but for a 35 dollar Canadian RTR car I would expect better quality then that.
I’m always tweaking RTR, whether it’s Intermountain, Red Caboose or Athearn. Just a habit I’ve picked up from years of building kits. The only major problems I’ve encountered was with a RTR six-pack of Athearn Rio Grande hoppers–they rode too HIGH! Now, after years of putting washers between the trucks and bolsters of Athearn kits to get the couplers up to the right NMRA height, I had to actually file DOWN the bolsters of the cars to get them to match–interesting! And a couple of them still uncouple at the beginning or top of a grade. Of course, I could have replaced the couplers with Kadee lowered-head knuckles, but that’s too simple, right? Yah, sure, LOL!
Tom [:I][:I]
