I haven't purchased an Athearn passenger car in many years, so this may be a question that has been asked and answered before.
A couple of members of my club purchased several new Athearn passenger cars. They are the same cars Athearn has been selling for decades, but of course now they are sold assembled.
When they tried to operate the cars nearly all of them had issues and derailed on every curve and several turnouts. Our club layout is probably not the best in the world, but we have some good track layers and generally most equipment operates with very few problems.
When I checked the cars I discovered that every one of them has trucks that are either warped or the center axle is lower than the two outboard axles, causing the trucks to teeter totter on the center wheel with either the inboard or outboard wheel in the air all the time. This allowed the wheel that is in the air to ride over the rail head any time the track isn't straight.
I tried bending the trucks gently so that the outer wheels would be level with the center wheel, but this didn't seem to help. My best solution, and it seems to be working, was to replace the center wheel with a 33 inch wheel. Since the outer wheels are 36 inch, this allows the truck to ride flat and level.
Anyone else run across this problem. Is there a better solution?
I am guessing that either the molds for these cars, and their parts, are starting to degrade to the point that they should be replaced, or they just drilled a batch with axle holes off a little bit and QC didn't catch the problem or didn't care.
A couple of members of my club purchased several new Athearn passenger cars. They are the same cars Athearn has been selling for decades, but of course now they are sold assembled.
When they tried to operate the cars nearly all of them had issues and derailed on every curve and several turnouts. Our club layout is probably not the best in the world, but we have some good track layers and generally most equipment operates with very few problems.
When I checked the cars I discovered that every one of them has trucks that are either warped or the center axle is lower than the two outboard axles, causing the trucks to teeter totter on the center wheel with either the inboard or outboard wheel in the air all the time. This allowed the wheel that is in the air to ride over the rail head any time the track isn't straight.
I tried bending the trucks gently so that the outer wheels would be level with the center wheel, but this didn't seem to help. My best solution, and it seems to be working, was to replace the center wheel with a 33 inch wheel. Since the outer wheels are 36 inch, this allows the truck to ride flat and level.
Anyone else run across this problem. Is there a better solution?
I am guessing that either the molds for these cars, and their parts, are starting to degrade to the point that they should be replaced, or they just drilled a batch with axle holes off a little bit and QC didn't catch the problem or didn't care.
