Tale of the Painted Lady of River Street

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

The ‘painted lady’, my name for the SW 1500 switch engine that once roamed Savannah, Georgias river street, came about because of the colorful paint scheme Central of Ga. railroad (Southern RR subsidary) applied to the locomotive. The official name was the River Street Rambler.

http://southern.railfan.net/ties/1977/77-11/rambler.html

Actually there were three different engines that came down the tracks laid in the middle of the narrow street, traveling from the yard to the American Cyanimid plant and other local industries. River Street, as many of you know, is a popular tourist spot so the little train was quite the attraction, playing dixieland jazz from a cassette player. One of the engines gave so much trouble that it was either sold off for scrap or to Manufacturers Railway, I’m not sure which. That’s the one I have a model of.

When Athearn came out with an HO scale model of the engine I purchased one the other day, and true to it’s name sake it’s been a headache. When I opened the box I had a funny feeling things didn’t look quite right, one side of the plastic cover being scuffed up a little. After installing the decoder and trying it out I found that the rear truck had no power and the rear light flickered on and off. I traced the truck problem to a bad wire connection and corrected that, but can’t run down the light issue. Then I noticed there were no sunshades included in the package. They’re almost always not installed but contained in a separate envelope in the package. I’ve concluded that the engine was purchased, tested and the light and truck problem discovered, reboxed (leaving out the sunshades) and returned to the dealer. That’s nothing more than a guess on my part but seems plausible. Here a shot of my unit.

[img]http://upload.pbase.com/image/111381664.

2

Athearn made a colour ‘foobie’?----kinda neat though[:-^]

Reason I ask is the photo on the site the bottom colour seems more blueish than the green on the model—but then again—my eyeballs must be off[:-^]

3

Barry, the link goes to a photo that was probably taken back in the 80s and my guess is it’s not very color accurate. I’m rather amazed that there are so few images of the prototype on the internet but google turns up this one and only.

Though I’m not crazy about Athearn’s wiring (on my model), I’m assuming they got the colors correct for the most part. You’re right though, it is kinda neat.

Jarrell

4

The color in the linked image of the real thing is totally washed out, either a poor photo or a poor scan. On the other hand, the color in Jarrell’s photo is a bit overly vivid. Brighten the prototype, and dull out the model a bit, and they’re probably close.

On the real topic at hand, if there were parts missing from a brand new model, I’d definitely return it. The power issue, well, let’s just say I am VERY disappointed in Athearn with the RTR line. The improved so much but still insist on using the kingpin as one side of the power pickup from the rails. I finally managed to get one of the RTR Reading RS-3’s and it has the same problem. On a simple single piece of flex track powered from my DCC system, the lights flicker and it stalls. My 3ft piece of track is clean, my other locos work fine. The wheels are clean on the Athearn. It’s purely an internal power issue. When I put the decoder in I saw there was only 1 wire coming from the trucks. When I get around to it, I will add in the ‘missing’ wire and eliminate the issue.

–Randy

5

You can say that again.

Jarrell