Hi!
I’ve noticed that frequently folks will advise using Athearn parts for Proto locomotives. Is Athearn now making the Proto line for Walthers, or are both companies using the same chassis/powertrain providers, or ? And along these lines, are the Lifelike facilities still producing or ???
Thank you - Just being curious…
There is not and never was any actual manufacturing connection. The original Proto B-B diesels, GP7, GP9, BL2, FA2, FA1, GP30, etc, etc, used a clone of the Athearn drive - in other words Proto copied the design down to the .001". The gear towers in the trucks are virtually identical to similar Blue Box and Ready to Roll Athearn locos.
Athearn held no patent, or patents had expired on the design, so copying it was not illegal.
Newer Proto locos have changed some and do not follow the Athearn design as closely. Example the new Proto EMD F uints from just a few years ago do not use the same drive as these older units that had the gear cracking problem.
And, a note on the gear problem, it was just one large batch of gears that was bad, nearly 20 years ago now, but it covered a lot of product. Later Proto runs of the same locos/designs did not have the problem. But MANY of the effected locos sat on warehouse or store shelves for a decade or more before reaching the hands of modelers. That is why it still comes up now and then.
Sheldon
Sheldon,
Thanks once again for a meaningful answer. Like a lot of folks I started HO with Athearn back in the very early '60s - rubber band drive and sprung trucks and all. And while I have (and had) a plethora of P2K locos, I have not bought an Athearn loco since the '70s.
When the early P2Ks came out, I bought one of each number of all the ATSF and IC GP7/9s and ATSF PA and E units and IC units as well. Of course, all of the GP7/9s had the gear problem, but I didn’t know this until much later. Fortunately, Walthers (may still have been Lifelike) sent me enough for all the locos, and that was a good thing. From postings on this Forum, folks are still getting locos with the problem (“new old stock”), and the good news is the Athearn parts will fit.
Thanks for clearing that up - it makes sense.
While I cannot explain any connection, some Athearn locos have the same cracked gear problem. I have many new, test run only Athearn locos and several have had cracked gears. Last one was a RTR GP 35. My guess is the gears are coming from the same mold, regardless of how they get installed in whatever locomotive.
As Sheldon just said, there is no relationship between the two companies, that includes the molds. They’re competitor’s and do not share.
As to the gear issue, this is a problem with the material (Delrin) and design. Delrin shrinks as it cools and this shrinkage has to be designed into the part. Delrin is very hard and doesn’t expand much when a steel axle is pressed into it, so if the hole is just slightly undersize pressing the axle into the hole can cause the part to crack. The original Proto design was just slightly too small. This was probably due to the fact that Proto cloned the gears exactly and didn’t account for the shrinkage.
The original Athearn BB gears were not made of Delrin and didn’t have this problem. That is not to say that Athearn locos have never had an occaisional cracked gear, they have and so have most of the other manufacturers. These are mostly due to other reasons, often the wrong lube which can also cause plastic parts to crack. Some of the newer Athearn RTR have old gears, some have newer Delrin or Acetal gears, all the Genesis have the Delrin or Acetal gears.
I’m not aware of any connection either, but I suppose it’s possible parts for Proto and Athearn engines could both be being made by the same manufacturer in China??
There are not that many factories making model trains in China, so it is not beyond the realms of feasibility that some of the models were actually made in the same factory. Just based on Athearn’s recent announcements concerning the demise of one of their sub-contract manufacturers in China it is apparent that they use more than one to produce their range.
Yikes! Hear that noise???
That’s the sound of Irv Athearn turning over in his final resting place.
He’s just been reminded once again that HIS trains are no longer made in southern California…
That’s all highly doubtfull and speculativ. These companies (Athearn, P2K, Atlas, etc) have paid thousands of $ for their own proprietary molds and their contracts would require their models be made from their own molds. Also, these models are not all produced at the same time, each model is produced in it’s own run and all the left over parts are usually sent along with the completed models as spare parts. The molds are also sent back to the companies when the runs a re done.
In addition to what Jay said, Athearn Blue Box locos were still being made in the USA back when Life Like had the gear cracking problem. As I have related MANY times, once Life Like fixed the problem, future runs of those same designs have been virtually trouble free from cracked gears.
Sheldon
Not to rain on your parade, but for nine years I worked for two of the larger US makers of trains. The molds in fact often belong to the company doing the work and not the company you see selling the product in the US. Many Atlas products were made from molds owned by Roco, and in fact the same items were later sold by other companies. Many structure kit molds are owned by Heljan in Denmark.
Ahhhhaaaaa!
That may have something to do with Cornerstone kits (some) are/were made in Denmark. I thought that very odd when I saw that on “Miss Bettie’s Diner”.
That situation does vary from company to company and supplier to supplier.
The original Life Like Proto line was actually tooled by Brawa and marketed by them in Europe. I have no idea what Walthers is doing with that line.
And, dies/tooling gets sold and passed around, and owners of that tooling will often make the product for anyone with enough money to spend.
But some companies do control their tooling, no matter who is doing the work for them.
Sheldon
There is certainly no working relationship between Athearn and Walthers, not since Athearn was acquired by Horizon Hobby. Immediately following the acquistion, the Walthers catalog stopped listing any and all Athearn products. Walthers and Horizon Hobby are strictly competitors.
As others have indicated, Athearn and Life Like (Proto) at one time “shared” certain parts of the drive assembly and that is why the Athearn gears are a perfect fit for the old Proto line. I cannot recall whose drive assembly was shared by Athearn and Proto, but it was neither Athearn or Proto that developed it. It was “borrowed” from a third party loco manufacturer whose name I cannot recall.
We need the real old timers to chime in here.
Rich
Richhotrain,
Having played with trains for almost 60 years, I’m definitely an “old timer”, although maybe not a “real” old timer. In any case, I am quite aware that there is no love lost between Walthers and the new Athearn, which is one of the reasons I did the OP in the first place.
Ive Athearn was one of the founding fathers of today’s HO hobby. His well engineered and affordable locos and cars (of which I became aware in the late '50s) were one of the cornerstones that allowed folks like me to make the jump from Lionel to the scale HO world. With track and controls from Atlas and power packs from MRC, the “masses” could afford to build that layout of their dreams.
The first Athearn locos I had (Fs & Gps) were rubber band drive (suitable for racing), which were followed by geared locos and then geared w/flywheel locos. To the best of my recall (an old timers limitation), those geared wheel sets were not the same as the P2Ks and Athearn’s of recent years.
As you indicated, there is a piece of the “puzzle” missing here, and I’m sure a real student of the hobby will be able to help us out.
ENJOY !
Don’t forget, Irv started out with O scale. All the Athearn ads in the 40’s MRs always state “O scale only” for their cars and detail parts. In the early days he was using his front yard to package kits - possible in Southern California.
–Randy
Rich,
As I explained in my first post, the design of the drive/truck gear tower was originally produced by Athearn in California, long before Horizon bought Athearn. The final plastic side frame version that Proto copied came out in the mid 80’s.
Proto simply took an Athearn loco, sent it to Brawa, and they copied the drive - it is done all the time, it’s called reverse engineering. Brawa did the tooling for Life Like/Proto, with the understanding that they could market the product in Europe. I don’t know any more details than that about tooling ownership, etc.
BUT Athearn parts and Proto parts have never came from the same source. Athearn made all their parts
Sheldon thanks for the interesting history and background on these major players in our hobby.
Ron
Sheldon,
I can’t imagine working in a hobby shop at age 13 - a dream for a lot of us come true. At 13 I had worked in my parents grocery store for some time, and was also delivering the Chicago Herald American, and later doing stints in the local pharmacy. Those jobs were ok at best, but working at a hobby shop would have been unimaginable to me at that time.
I’m sure it wasn’t all fun, but it sure must have been a wonderful experience!
Yes it was great experiance, at first I made $1/hr - paid in merchandise, or about 60 cents an hour!
But when I turned 14 and could work legally, I got a raise - $1,50/hr in REAL money.
By age 15 I was doing most of the repairs in the shop. We were aurthorized dealers for Lionel and Mantua/Tyco. I got to meet a lot of great modelers and people in the business at a young age - it was great fun.
Just as I was turning 16, the owner decided to move the business to Harpers Ferry WV and also to build an operating diorama of the events of John Brown’s 1859 raid on the town. That summer I traveled to Harpers Ferry and stayed the whole summer helping to set up and run the new store and build the diorama. And watching the real trains roll through town when not working.
That business and the diorama are long gone now.
A year or two latter a new shop opened up in our area and I walked in and asked for a job, sighting my previous experiance. In few years I was full time and running that train department. While working there I met many of the bigger “players” here in the east in the hobby and model train business.
But things got slow, I moved on to better paying stuff in the fields I was trained for in school. I am still very close friends with the owner of that second shop - he is now long out of the business and retired.
While working for him, we could see the changes starting in the h