The Athearn bulbs are 1.5 volt. If you plug a decoder in the 9 pin connector they will be fine, the reistos are on the circuit board. If you remove the circuit board you will need resistors for the lights.
–Randy
Tell me the difference between the blue box and the RTR mechanism? Hex drive is the only major difference I am aware of and ok, the RTR have the hand rails applied and a extra details, better paint job but this post is about running qualities.
Even with the advent
Athearn replied to my inquiry and said that the ATH63843 bulbs are 1.5 volt, rated at 12 to 16 ma., and are 1.34 mm diameter.
Rich
riogrande5761,
The differences between BB and RTR drives are generally as follows:
1). Hex shaft interface with flywheel - Removes the slip shaft coupling that caused a lot of flopping around and vibration noise.
2). Ball & Peg interface with worm - As a snap-in coupling, removes more slop from the drive.
3). Plastic worm - The old brass worms, while hardy, were not the quietest around. The new slippery plastic worm is quieter.
4). Shouldered gears - The old gears had teeth that went right to the edge of the wheel hub, meaning that these teeth would run on the sides of the gear box…sometimes severely. The shouldered gear tooth profile prevents that and reduces noise.
5). Nickle-Silver wheels - The old sintered metal wheels have a rough surface that not only collects dirt, but also sounds louder than the smoothly plated N-S wheels.
However, that being said, there is one more source of grinding noise that has cropped up with the RTR’s vs. the old BB’s. The parts quality control and the assembly quality control has suffered since the move to China. In California, the ladies that assembled all the Athearn motors had been doing so for decades and each engine was assembled then test driven around a loop of track (I’ve seen pictures of the process). A grinding engine would be rejected and re-built . Today, the Chinese-made parts seem to be looser when assembled and the people assembling them don’t take the same care that the ladies in CA used to. For example, a friend’s engine came new in the box with the motor windings grinding against the magnets in the motor. That never would have happened in CA.
BTW, to improve things with an Athearn motor, try running it and twisting the motor ends around. There should be a “sweet spot” where the motor is perfectly aligned. I did that to my friend’s GP40X, and now it sounds like an Atlas. And I’m not kidding. I then e
The details on the athearn MILW #465/469 match my prototype pretty well (as far as I can tell), except it is short hood forward (prototype ran long hood forward), but the orange paint on the bottom also matches it well too. Would it be possible to paint over the black paint on top, or do I need to strip the paint on the entire thing?
sfb
I wish I could help you, but I have no experience painting locomotives. You may want to start a new thread to catch the attention of those who have such experience.
Rich
Paul,
Thanks for the insights and tips for the newer RTR Athearns. I have added quite a few since the RTR line has been introduced (at least 35 that I can count from memory) and I’m sure some of them will need some attention to improve the running characteristics.
BTW, it looks like one of my few remaining blue box engines slipped past Uncle Irvs QAQC “ladies”. I still have 2 blue box GP40-2’s and one of them was a coffee grinder extra-ordinaire, it vibrated pretty badly out of the box. I took it appart and its been in a pieces and parts box for years as I never did rebuild the darn thing.
I have one Atheran RS-3 that didn’t run properly when I took it out of the box. But it was not the motor that was the problem - it was the gears. The gears were too loose and floppy, so I found some gears from an old Life-Like Proto GP18 and I put them in. Now the loco runs fine.
Does anyone have a Bachmann RS-3? How well do they run after the decoder is replaced and how are the details on it?
Thanks,
sfb
The MILW RS-3s (and RSD-5s) were set up short hood forward. The 465 and 469 (actually 465-470) retained their normal trucks for their service lives. The earlier RS-3s (450-464) had their road trucks removed and sent to EMD for use under GP30s. They received trucks from retired Alco switchers.
The MILW units were late production Phase III units, with different carbody filter arrangement (pretty much no louvers in the long hood, just screened openings). About the only model of this carbody was made by Stewart, as a flat kit.
Well, one way to get exactly what you want is to get an Atlas chassis and mate it with an Athern shell. [:P]