I was wondering are the walther rotary snowplows better than the athearn plows? I am gettting one for my birthday and i wanted to know did i tell mt friend to ghet me the right plow.
gee, plasser, on the Bachmann board you said you already have a walthers rotary plow.[#oops][V]
http://www.bachmanntrains.com/home-usa/board/index.php/topic,771.0.html
stick to the truth, and “SPELL”-CHECK!!!
Whatever the truth is, where would one obtain a Walthers rotary? They were only produced once and I don’t think they are available. I could be wrong, I don’t check Walthers lists.
I have one of the original Walthers models, it is really nice, smaller than the Athearn version. The rotary blade has a motor that turns it at a constant speed, as it is connected via a constant lighting circuit. The only problem with mine is the motor and blade are connected with a drive belt. Looked at mine a while ago and it is broken. Just like the rubber band drives on older Athearn RDCs, Hustlers and other diesels, their band would break after sitting for some time. I never bothered looking at it to see how much effort would be involved in replacing the drive belt. Don’t know if you can even buy replacement ones, but I imagine a small rubber band would do.
I have both the Athern & Walthers plows. Both seem very OK. They both run on DC & DCC, and the Athern blades turn faster than the Walthers, both a a constant speed. The Walthers turns at the “standby” speed the prototypes run at idle, the Athern seems to be at the “operating” speed, when compared to the video of the modern UP plow.[8D]
The Athearn plow is prototypic for the last four Lima-built rotaries that were sold to the Southern Pacific. They are nice enough. I, myself, prefer the Walthers model. It is a somewhat more generic model of an older Cooke built prototype and as such is suited to a wider range of prototype railroads. I own one and to suit my Great Northern prototype, changed out the tender and replaced it with a surplus brass GN Vanderbilt tender to more closely follw my prototype’s configuration. I would say, in answer to your question, IMHO, yes, you asked for the right plow.
I have an Athern Rotary that I motorized quite a few years ago. I set it up with a direct drive shaft so it turns really fast. (operating speed) I rigged 2 small spring loaded motor brushes to contact both rails and pick up power. Seems to work pretty good.
Can I ask a stupid question. Why would anyone want an operating rotary plow? Even if you are modeling a winter scene, surely your track is not going to be snow covered. What is the point of running a rotary plow over a clear track? I’ve considered getting a rotary plow as a static model and parking it on a track with the rest of my MOW equipment, all of which is there for visual interest but serves no operational purpose.
Because it is neat to see the blades spin. [:)]
-George
In my case, I am modelling winter, but as you say, I doubt I’ll be actually plowing snow with my Walthers unit (except maybe to try to take a pic.) I don’t know, for me it’s pretty neat to watch it work. I installed a DCC sound decoder in mine, which allows me to change the speed and direction of the rotation, and the sound synchs up quite well after some CV fiddling. I set the momentum CV’s pretty high, so it takes about 30 seconds to get up to full speed with a very slow start to the blades.
Here’s my version of a shortened Athearn plow, “at work”:
(Click on photo to enlarge)
Does seem kinda gimmicky, doesn’t it?
Bob, sometimes you crack me up,lolol. You have a picture for just about anything train related. Thats a “cool” looking pic.
Thats what I’ve done with the two I have. You would be surprised the number of non train people that have asked what they are.
I do have a walther rotary plow. I just want another one. I am getting it from a hobby store called switch stand. They moved and i saw it on the shelf so i wanted it. And the reason i want it is because… well for one theng it says UP. And another i could use it when we have a snow layout at the club meets.
I do have one already.
The Athearn rotary appears to me to match up exactly with UP plows 075 and 076. There are pictures of 900076 (former 076) on pages 114 and 115 of “uP Color Guide…” by Lou Schmitz.
On pages 450 and 451 of the 19th Edition of the “Car Builders Cyclopedia”, there are plans and some artwork for the Lima-Hamilton prototype. It is noted that UP, Soo Line, and Rock Island had copies. The UP certainly did (see earlier paragraph), but I don’t know much about the other two. I wonder if perhaps SP got plows from Rock Island after the bankruptcy.
Ed
Well some of my steam engines have working cab windows, but I never hear the crew asking to open them, so we can lose them. I suppose the engine’s Walschaert or Baker valve gear doesn’t really do anything but look good since the engine runs on electricity not steaml, so that could be removed too. The whistle sound comes from a speaker in the tender, not from the whistle on the engine, so that can go too.
Point is, in the real world, rotary snowplows rotate - so why shouldn’t a model too??[:D]
As I said earlier, I have the Athern & Walthers. How about this plow http://www.tmrci.com/Videos/G03Snow1.WMV , now if they could get a real rotary…[:O]
The Athearn rotary is the prototype for the SOO and the Rock Island; don’t know about UP, but I wouldn’t doubt it! Athearn made a model of SOO X-19, but the tender is wrong. They would have to have a ex-RI Vanderbelt tender to make them prototypical (and if they made RI Vanderbelt tenders, I would model the RI and C&NW push plows made out of them).
Phil
But do they rotate when the train is just running along a track without snow on it to plow? Because that’s what you’d be doing–just driving along with the blades turning for no discernable reason.