Hello all, I was wondering. How do todays athearns engines run? I ask because I left the hobby for a few years, I’m talking since I was eighteen years of age, I am now thityseven. Anyway back then I had a total of four athearn engines & two atlas engines. I praised my atlas engines, but liked athearn engines, my athearns were hard working engines, easy to maintain & break down. But I never really liked the way they sounded, they were kind of robotic. The atlas engines were always smooth, solid, hard pullers, it’s like as though they had no limits. Anyway since I’ve gotten back into the hobby, I’ve started collecting my personal favorites again. So far I have four atlas, three proto 2ks & two katos. I’m a little curios about today’s athearns, are they smooth runners, do they have better engines, better details, dcc ready? Thank you for any answers given.
If you liked your old Atlas locos, wait until you try out the new ones. The new Athearn RTRs get some mixed reviews. The certainly run better than the old “Blue Box” (which are still available) and have some faily decent details that are already applied. Some have complained that they’re noisey, way quieter than the old ones, and the quality control is off. I don’t have any problems with them.
Bob K.
The new Athearn’s are Ok. While they’re not up to the detail and workmanship of some others, they’re good runners, reasonably reliable and most are easy to repair. I have no problem tearing mine down for cleaning and maintenance. Disassembly, cleaning and reassembly usually takes about 30 minutes.That’s very fast compared to the three and a half hours required for one of my Proto 2000’s. Athearn’s can be noisy and problematic at times but if you keep them clean and lubed, they’ll run for years. I have several I bought in the mid '80’s that are still going.
I just bought an Athearn Genesis SD70M and I’m very happy with it. There is very little noise other than the metal wheels on the track. The detail is pretty good (my opinion) and the paint is nice and crisp. I also have a RTR SD70. There is a little bit of motor hum at slow speeds but nothing I can’t live with. The detail is good too. The only thing I don’t like is how difficult it is to remove the shells on both models.
I don’t have any Kato or Atlas engines to compare them with but overall I think Athearn locos are pretty good for the price.
CSXFan,
I hope your Athearn Genesis SD70M is a newer model and not like the 4 I bought that all had the notorious warped trucks that caused continual derailments. Athearn would not honor any warranty so I had to purchase the replacements from them – no more Athearns for me.
I’ve haven’t had very many problems with getting parts for my Athearn BB locos. I have known people however, who bought locos that were released with problems like the above mentioned SD70M. Usually in such a case, a disclaimer is released advising people about the defect and that it must be corrected at their own expense. I’m surprised this wasn’t done in this case. And it isn’t just Athearn that does it. I’ve seen companies that turn out beautiful products release a flawed product because of high demand and the product line gets a turkey label because of it. I don’t hear people screaming about BLI or Atlas not standing behind a flawed product, and they’ve had them. In almost every case, the customer had to pay for replacement parts out of his/her own pocket.
CSXFan, did you buy them pre Horizon acquisition? I believe the problem was a warped pickup rail on the trucks. Apparently there was some heavy handed assembly on Athearn’s subcontracted manufacturer. Many were fixed by dissembling the trucks and bending them straight.
Out of curiosity and for our education, did Athearn explain why you had to pay for the replacement trucks?