Dont buy Athearn Genesis GP9


I have (2) of the RTR Athearn GP-35's. I spent $99.99 for them at the LHS. In comparing them to the old BB GP-35's, Well the new ones are light years a head of the old ones. I paid $19.99 They have the molded on grab irons, sort of shaped like fans on top. The new ones run better, look better and are way better then the cost difference. I am not a rivet counter and I could not tell you if they had 48 inch fans or 36 inch fans. I would be hard pressed to tell you the difference between a GP35 and GP 38.

I worked at Generous Dynamics building the MD-11. My main job was repairing after a mistake in building it. I was talking with the lead ENG one day. I asked him about the number of fasteners. After about an hour of talking, it came down to when this is brand new, never flown, just rolled out of the hanger, they figured 1 in 4 fasteners were no good. Yet another 50% had to fail before it became an unworthy airframe. I saw stuff you would not believe while there. Using super glue to hold rivets in. Sealant to cover bad fitting parts. The inspector loved me. One I did damn good work and I would tell them if I saw crappy work. We thought we may just have to fly one some day and we wanted to stay in one piece.


Buzz.
 
Look at the wheels of all your and your friend's locomotives. They'll scale out to about a 18" wide tire tread only if they are semi-Proto. What's up with that!!? Better throw out all those fooby wheel sets, Doc. And while we're starting low on those fooby GP9's, lets take a close look at the couplers. I hope you have them swapped out with something a bit closer to the prototype's. Tsk...and to think Kadees and Sargeants are the gold standard. Notice, too, that the sand tubes don't have the requisite holes bored into their entire length. Not satisfactory for any dilettante, no siree, and certainly not for the truly discerning modeller...right Doc?

You might also have noticed that the handrails scale to about 6" thick in HO. They have GOT to be kidding!!! Who could possible wrap their HO scale figure hands around those stand-pipe-thick crazies?

I could go on...by you catch my drift, surely.
 
This thread has made me realize I've been led along and fooled all these years in believing I have both steam and diesel engines on my railroad. In fact they are neither!! Every last one of them is electric powered!!! So to avoid the embaressment of a guest pointing out this important fact I am going to order 71 pantographs and several hundred feet of overhead catenery so being electric powered they will look electric powered. For now though I am off to my nit garden to see what needs picking. :p
 
doct0rnic said:
my friend had a large order of athearn gp northern pacific gp 9s and was not happy, the biggest issue was the hood was two scale inches shorter than it should, the paint was off, the window was larger than prototypical and numerous other detail problems. I cancelled my order of BN gps because even though no other manufacturer is making units, 250.00 a unit with sound as advanced reservation is too much to spend for a unit that might be wrong, if I spend that kind of money I want the engine to be perfect.
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Maybe you should talk to the guys over at www.therailwire.net . I'm sure they found way more wrong with it than you did . A scale two inches, thats pretty funny.
 
This whole thing tells me that absolutely no one would appreciate my wayyyy off proto suspended layout. After all...real railroads are not in clouds or near a ceiling in anything but my imagination.
 
doct0rnic
Something that's 1/16" thick on the prototype, would be 0.000072" thick in HO scale. Can anything be made that thin in plastic much less in metal? Don't think so! And many things on the prototype diesels can be between 1/16" to 1/4" thick.
 
I think I have bought my last non-BB Athearn diesel. I bought an F3A/B set, and later the other F3A to run as an A-B-A. This is the Burlington Cal Zephyr passenger F's set. I had to take the three units to my LHS (which is one of the largest west of the Mississippi) to get them to consist and run at the same speeds. The Tsunami sound decoders and the downloaded instructions are pretty complicated, and nothing like the QSI decoder/instructions of other units. After getting the speed situation resolved, I found out that the headlight/Mars light settings have been screwed up (did the DSS expert reset everything to factory before fixing the speeds?). As it was, Athearn picked up some information that both upper and lower lights on the "Q" F3A units operated together! That just wasn't so, at least when I was riding and watching them as a kid. I rewired the upper lights to the F5 terminals on the decoder board, which allows me to turn on the Mars light independent of the headlight (lower), but there are still some weird things, such as the long horn sound being controlled by F2 and the short horn bleat by F3. I tried reprogramming F2 to get both long and short, but when I do a long blast, it is followed by a short blast. Back to the drawing board! Not only that, but, unlike the old BB Athearn F7's, where you removed the body from the chassis by simply spreading the bottom sides near the fuel tank, on the new stuff, you have to remove the couplers, then undo two screws at the rear end of the unit. To reassemble, you reverse the project. Getting those coupler pocket screws back in is a real pain. A magnetized small Phillips screwdrive is a must. I replaced the front couplers on both A units, with Kaydee #146's, and the rear with Kaydee #5's (or whatever ones have the centering whiskers that are equivalent.) Too bad Athearn isn't making dummy units, as I don't really need all the power in three units.
 
doct0rnic said:
my friend had a large order of athearn gp northern pacific gp 9s and was not happy, the biggest issue was the hood was two scale inches shorter than it should, the paint was off, the window was larger than prototypical and numerous other detail problems. I cancelled my order of BN gps because even though no other manufacturer is making units, 250.00 a unit with sound as advanced reservation is too much to spend for a unit that might be wrong, if I spend that kind of money I want the engine to be perfect.
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your realize Rivarrossi's steam engines were slightly oversized to accomodate the larger flanges? NEM standard for europe.
And the wheels were slightly undersized again to accomodate the larger flanges, essentially the flanges were scale sized to the prototype. In that time tho you didnt complain so much about the details off here and there, you got the model you were looking for.

sometimes I think were so spoiled today, but in some ways thats a good thing as the model makers have improved their model designs, even for the rivets.....but you know, this stuff from china sometimes...
 
Hank4014 said:
Of everything you mention, only the fridge would bother me enough to post on the internet about it...
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Strangely enough, I got a call from the appliance people yesterday, asking if their technician's service had met my expectations. I told them he couldn't find anything wrong with my fridge, and I had started posting about the issue on the internet.
My new fridge should be here Friday... And they say the internet is useless, and a waste of resources.
 
essentially the knuckle has a "pin" the rotating center for the knuckle, all train forces go thru this.

I hate it when you search the net for an issue like a refrigerator, you find an "I can answer that, technician online"
you go to the site ask your question....then it asks for your credit card
 
dinwitty said:
essentially the knuckle has a "pin" the rotating center for the knuckle, all train forces go thru this.
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That pin only holds the knuckle on the coupler. You can close the knuckle remove the pin and pull a train without it in, a lot of newer pins are actually made out of plastic. The pin inside the coupler that drops down to secure the closed knuckle is the one that basically holds all the force of the train.
 
MGWSY said:
That pin only holds the knuckle on the coupler. You can close the knuckle remove the pin and pull a train without it in, a lot of newer pins are actually made out of plastic. The pin inside the coupler that drops down to secure the closed knuckle is the one that basically holds all the force of the train.
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How big is that pin and what is it made of? That must be some strong stuff!
 
RCShadow said:
How big is that pin and what is it made of? That must be some strong stuff!
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I love how with the excellent quality microtrains couplers and draft gear......the dynamics of a long N scale train in motion are very similar to a real one.
 
someone made a boxcar with a flywheel inside, its like them toy cars years ago, you rev them up plodding them on the floor to get the flywheel going, them drop them down and off they went flying.

A string of these flywheel cars would give your model train the true mechanics of operation, starting and stopping is not DCC virtualized, its for real! Better have your dynamic brakes handy going downhill...
 
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