I am asking for some help and advice for my next HO rolling stock purchase, i have bought some Exact rail box cars in the past they are great but pricey and i have some older Athearn cars with plastic trucks and wheels but i think they are junk. I am primarily interested in gondolas box and ore cars. is there a happy medium for good manufacturers ? I am open to any suggestions. Thank you Bear.
I’m not sure why you refer to your Athearn cars as “junk”. While they don’t have the detail of a Kadee or Intermountain car they usually run good and with a little effort can be upgraded. Kadee couplers, metal wheelsets, adding wire steps and grabs, weathering will make those Athearn cars look more compatible with the current stock of highly detail equipment. Something to keep in mind, newer highly detailed cars with delicate features require careful handling to keep from damaging those details. Older Athearn blue box cars are a lot more durable.
Depends on why you are unhappy with Athearn. If operations are a problem and you think it is the wheels, trucks, or couplers then replace them. Kadee makes some nice trucks and their couplers are the standard. You could also replace the wheelsets and do some tune up on the trucks.
If the appearance is what you don’t like, you can add/replace detail. Otherwise, visit a well stocked hobby store or train show to see what you do like at a price you can afford.
Good luck
Paul
It depends on what era you’re modeling, what boxcars and gondolas will then work for you. Forty or fifty foot boxcars? If your in the 50’s/60’s, even 70’s Branchline, Accurail, Intermountain,Atlas and Kadee cars work, but they’re not cheap either, although, branchlines kits are on sale for about $10 a piece. Gondolas by accurail ,proto/walthers, atlas,tangent are good models depending on era. Athearn’s gon is basically generic, so are most of their forty and fifty foot boxcars. Check out web sites of each manufacturer and see for yourself.mh
Proto 2000 has some good 52’6’ mill gondola models.
Here’s the low down:
If you like the Exact rail cars and are happy with them, save your pennies to buy them.
YOu CAN spend cheaper money on a Athearn RRcar or any other cheaper car, but if you have to buy new wheel sets, trucks and/or couplers then you add to the effective overall price of it.
Ex: I have a tight budget, Very tight, WHen I first got back into the hobby, I bought some cheap cars to have something to run that was more detailed than trainset quality, but still cheap. I picked up a $5 car that had horn hook couplers on it. The hobby shop owner suggested the cheaper MCHenry knuckle couplers{$1**.**99} to replace the horn hooks as opposed to the KD’s as the KD’s were about $3.99 and to put them on a $5 car was “a bit rediculous” he said. I also changed to metal wheels later too. Another few dollars. SO my $5 car ended up costing about $10. I could have spent $12-$15 and gotten a more detailed car and metal wheels and knuckle couplers already on it for just a few bucks more than it ended up costing me for the cheapo car. Now those $12-15 cars are more like $18-$20, but well worth it over the cheapo $5.99 cars, or even the $10 cars.
Just food for thought.
I’m a big fan of Proto 2000 gondolas, both the kit and RTR versions. You must be talking about the Athearn Blue Box kits as junk. Their newer RTR and Genesis box cars are great performers with lots of detail.
I guess I’m not picky enough - I run everything from Athearn to Kadee. Sure the details on the Kadee cars are MUCH nicer than the Athearn - when viewed from 6 inches away. I couldn;t afford to populate my layout with Kadde and other top of the line cars, so I have more Athearn, Accurail, and Stewart than anything. From 3 feet away, they all look decent.
–Randy
I’m with Randy. I’ve been buying cars since the mid eighties and we didn’t have a lot of choices back then. With over 400 cars on the layout, I’m not about to replace them all for the latest fad in detail, metal wheels etc. Most of my Athearn and MDC cars still have their plastic wheels as I have never had any reason to change them, they roll just as freely as any of the newer cars I have with metal wheels and I’ve never had any issues with dirt build up. All cars are weighted, weathered and KDed. When you’re running trains with 40-60 cars at 30-40 smph, you’d be hard pressed to pick out the newer “more detailed” cars, (except maybe by the increased noise they make because of those metal wheels!).
While not super-detailed, old Athean cars are hardly junk, how many of these newer cars will still have all their detail and still be running in 30 years? (Unless their just shelf queens).
You’re correct in one sense, Galaxy, but by upgrading those el cheapo cars, you gain valuable modelling experience, surely worth some of the added cost, I would think. [swg]
Like most, I started out with Athearn and other available brands like Varney, Mantua/Tyco, Ulrich, Authenticast, etc. As newer stuff (and more money) became available, I expanded my choices. Still, many of the cheaper cars, including Athearn BB can be made into perfectly acceptable models if you don’t mind spending a few bucks and enjoy doing the work. Even better, you can often pick up these cars, used, almost for free.
A few examples, all under $10.00 and most under $5.00:
Athearn -
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I have several Athearn cars that came in blue and yellow boxes is this what you guys are referring to? they all were brand new when i bought them well over 50 of them i put some of them together but find the trucks wobbly and derail very easily even after tinkering with them. Maybe they are just to old. there are no hobby shops around me that carry train stuff so i buy mostly off the internet.
That’s the ones, and they’re the same as the Blue box/Yellow Box cars which I showed in my first five pictures.
Depending on when the kit was made, Athearn trucks could look pretty decent or they could be pretty poorly-formed - I’d replace the latter, but usually with just a better version of the Athearn truck - performance-wise, though, both are acceptable.
If you have problems with the wheels, you can replace them - several firms offer replacement wheelsets for Athearn cars. If money is an issue, use your NMRA gauge to check that all wheels are in-gauge: if they’re not, simply twist them on the axle while pulling or pushing the wheel in the proper direction. I find Athearn wheels perform just fine, and seldom replace them. If they’re not rolling freely, use a truck tuner to ream the bearing holes in the truck sideframes.
When installing the trucks, tighten one screw until the truck won’t pivot, then back it out until it just does. On the other truck, repeat the procedure, but back the screw out a little more and leave it. This helps to allow the car to track better over rough trackwork. You can also use the NMRA gauge to check your track, which may be the cause of your derailments.
Wayne
I agree with Dr. Wayne, I have dozens of Athearn cars and they are all stalwart performers. I have upgraded the details on many of them.
I am old enough to remember how exciting it was when Atheran brought out not one but THREE new twin hopper models, the rib side, offset side and composite cars. That doubled the number of plastic hopper models available (previously only the Varney/Lifelike USRA Twin, the Athearn quad and the Roundhouse triple were available). The only other hopper models were the cast metal ULrich cars sold by Walthers.
For those of us modeling the NE US, more hoppers is always exciting.
Thanks for the help, i have checked all my track and it is perfectly within NMRA specs. As far as i can tell thus far the trucks on the ones i have looked at are a little suspect these cars are about twenty years old i think? maybe older ,not sure i bought a complete RR from an estate, i know they are not as detailed as the exact-rail. I just have so many of them i am not even counting my gondolas or the ore cars. i like the detail work on yours how did you weather them? i just hope i did not waste all that money on cars i am going to have to retro fit. well at the very least they look good in my yard. Bear.
The weathering was done mostly with an airbrush, although some of the Train Miniature cars got washes, too. While some of those cars have been re-worked fairly recently, the TM and Athearn cars date originally from the '70s, while the two Varney cars were acquired new in the late '50s. Many of these cars had sprung trucks when new, and many of those trucks are still in service, albeit under other cars. A few have had their wheels replaced with plastic ones from Athearn, as the flanges on the originals were somewhat large. Most Train Miniature wheels were not very good quality, although they looked pretty good for the time: many were out-of-round, and/or not square on the axle.
Wayne
I guess I’m lucky in that money isn’t that much of an issue when buying rolling stock. However, I enjoy taking a $5 Athearn kit and upgrading the trucks, wheelsets, couplers, etc. I also like to weather everything that runs on my layout. Most of the people who view my layout will be people who don’t know the difference in detail on a car but do notice when it is “old and dirty”.
Bear,
How about Accurail? The undercarriage is somewhat spartan but the shells have nice detail to them.
Accurail came out with their 41’ AAR steel gons last year. Very nice cars - and you can get them in kit form. [Y] Their box cars are usually '70 era and older though. Still nice though. (Don’t know if you are looking at new stock?) I don’t know if Accurail makes jennies or not. Kits are usually $10-12; RTR, $14-16.
Tom
Every piece of rolling stock on my layout WILL eventually end up with KD’s & metal wheels. Not right away, but eventually. I’m not wealthy!
I have Athearn BB, RTR & Genesis, Intermountain, Atlas, Accurail, Roundhouse, Branchline & a few more manufacturers rolling stock for my layout. Out of all of them, the Branchline Kits were the worst out of the box. I had problems with them, figured out the problem & resolved said problem.
Model railroad stuff is like any other mass produced product . There is a chance you might have problems with it.
If you don’t like your Athearn rolling stock, I’ll buy it from ya! [;)]
Just my 2 cents
Gord in Whitby!
Hmmm, I have loved the Athearn blue box cars almost all my life. I don’t think any of the layouts I operate on could live without the good old Athearn cars. Most reliable stable of the HO model railroading industry for 50 years. I upgrade the Athearn with Kadee couplers and new wheel sets. Occasionally I scrape off the molded on hand rails and add ones made of brass, even less occasionally I replace the roof walks with brass etched or see through styrene. What I have found in heavy operation mode the Athearn, Accurail, Bowser, and Roundhouse will stand up over time while the detailed ones Proto-2000, Intermountain, Genesis, Kadee, Tichy-train, Atlas and the like get all their detail broken off and end up looking worse. Not to mention the $20 price difference. If one doesn’t have an operating layout where all the clods in the operating group have fat fingers and the trains just run around for photo ops, the up grade cars are probably better.
There are TONS of options out there in the HO world with all Quality grades from cheap toy Life-Like, Industrial Rail the up one level Bachmann and IHC that grade up through the Athearn BB and Proto-1000, and up into the Intermountain and Atals and then even more into the brass. Shop around try all different brands and you will start to vector into the price-point level needed for your layout and budget.
All the Athearn cars I have bought have metals wheels and I am for the most part, very happy with them. I did have one coal car that did have a ever so slight wobbly wheel that I just replaced. I would not run anything with a plastic wheel but that is just me. Another decent buy is Bachmann Silver Series… they have metal wheels and are decently modeled and most are about $10… Seem a little light compared to the Athearn cars but I have not issues running them either and are great to practice weathering before you start on something more expensive.