My Athearn diesel roster

[CP6027]

The oldest in this shot is my BN #2264 GP38-2 which is from around 1984. This loco is so quiet and smooth compared to all my other Blue Boxes. The UP #53 GP50 is from around 1990 and was always noisy. It came with cast brass flywheels. I purchased the BN orange tiger face GP50 off eBay in Jan of this year and it was brand new never been used and it's somewhat noisy. The UP GP38-2 and BN U28B are both Blue box dummies. Most of the noise from the Blue Box GP50's are from motor vibrations and u-joint transfer of that noise. The trucks and gear boxes are ok. I would like to make these run as good as the RTRs but I don't think it would be cost effective. I went through these and installed new motor mounts and cleaned the gear boxes and even rewired these direct to the trucks.

My firat plan was to install decoders in my old Blue boxes but once I found out how much better my Proto 2000s and Athearn RTRs ran I had to abandon the idea. The BN GP38-2 and GP50 have NCE decoders and working LED beacons as they run pretty decent.

The UP AC4400, CSX SD40, and SP GP40-2 are all Ready-to-Roll and are very smooth and quiet. The quality of these is night and day from the Blue Boxes. I installed sound decoders in the SD40 and AC4400 and created a thread for each in the Wiring, Electronics and DCC section.

I consider myself a loyal Athearn guy, but I had a early Genesis SD70M and a SD75I. I wasn't impressed with the flimsy trucks and sold them on ebay for a loss. I like the RTR/Blue Box style trucks as they are very robust and can be disassembled without breaking. To me the noise isn't in the trucks anyway. To be honest though, my Proto 2000 SD50 is probably the best running loco I have even though it has the odd low gearing. That think weighs a ton and has very nice details to boot.

Now that I'm back into the hobby, I plan on getting a Atlas and a Kato so I can compare them to my Athearn and Proto 2000. Some of the Katos I hear running on the club layout seem to make a lot of gear whine. I have run a couple of the Atlas GP40s and they are very smooth and quiet. I don't really like the price point of the Atlas and Kato, hope I don't fall in love with them. lol

Jerry

 

[jeffrey-wimberly]

That's quite a line-up. I'll have to get around to doing mine sometime.

 

[Trucklover]

Nice locos Jerry

I like the UP Flag Dash 9 the best tho

 

[CP6027]

Nice locos Jerry

I like the UP Flag Dash 9 the best tho

I just clicked on your Trucklover's Index Thread, wow you have a lot of diesels. You have a very nice collection. I see that you have a lot of Genesis SD70s are you happy with the way they run? I do think they look great but I was disappointed in the quality of the trucks and lack of weight in the chassis.

Have you done any hard wire decoder installs on your non-dcc ready locos? I like to use NCE D13SRJ becuase they come with a 9 pin quick plug harness. You can use the harness for your wiring and when you are done it's DCC ready. I use warm white 3mm LEDs front and rear for headlights

When I did the BN GP38-2 I used the individual wires from CAT5E ethernet cable for the wiring to the trucks. This was the smallest guage wire I had at the time. I have the amber LED for the beacon in the roof, and the warm white 3 mm leds front and rear with 1K ohm resisters. I put heat shrink tubing over the decoder and pushed it to the top of the long hood.

On the UP GP50, I had this the same way as the GP38-2 but the motor vibrated too much. I swapped motors with an old F unit, but the loco is still not that good so I pulled the decoder out. Here I am experimenting with keeping everything off of the shell. I used brass channel and soldered it to the top motor clip. Here I used 30 awg wire to the trucks. Since I was keeping this DC I added diodes to the LEDs to keep them from coming on when the loco was going the opposite direction. You could easily add a decoder to this loco and have a completely removable shell with no wiring attached to it.

 

[Trucklover]

I just clicked on your Trucklover's Index Thread, wow you have a lot of diesels. You have a very nice collection. I see that you have a lot of Genesis SD70s are you happy with the way they run? I do think they look great but I was disappointed in the quality of the trucks and lack of weight in the chassis.

Have you done any hard wire decoder installs on your non-dcc ready locos? I like to use NCE D13SRJ becuase they come with a 9 pin quick plug harness. You can use the harness for your wiring and when you are done it's DCC ready. I use warm white 3mm LEDs front and rear for headlights

Thanks!! Im up to 24 locos now lol, all Athearn RTR, Athearn Genesis, Atlas Silver, or KATO's

Ive never actually run any of my locos believe it or not, so i cannot comment on the way any of them run, but i have heard mostly good about all of them, especially the Genesis and KATO's, Atlas Silver too, really there all good from what i have heard, thats why ive been buying them and selling my Athearn Blue Box's lol

I had that same UP GP50 you have there, i sold it to Nick (upnick) along with a bunch of my other Athearn BB's. He's fitting them with DCC, i just didnt feel like going through the hassle of hard wiring them, and plus, i made it a personal goal to achieve all RTR or better in the loco roster lol.

I do have 3 locos that will need to be hard wired when it comes to installing decoders, there my 3 Athearn RTR GP38-2's (2 BNSF and a CSX). Ill be sending them off to a member on this forum where he will install and hard wire some TCS decoders in them, id rather just not deal with hard wiring at all lol

 

[nmaniac]

You gotta love that BN tiger face

 

[malletman]

I have found many of the older BB Athearn flywheels are not drilled true, once removed, the motors are vibrtation free and fairly quiet. I replaced many of my older flywheels with ones from Aline or Timewell ect and that stopped most of the loudness. I will get some pics of my Athearn RTR GP38-2's in the INRD (Indiana Railroad) colors pulling my Peabody/IPL coal train. I plan to add a 3rd GP38-2 in INRD to the consist soon. Even with the older metal handrails (which are more duarble btw), you just cannot beat a old Athearn Blue Box engine. The later models in that line up, EMD GP38-2, 40-2, 50 and 60 series have awsome scale shells for what they cost when new. Nobody other than brass has better side frames on a 4 axle EMD. I am hoping that Athearn reissues the SD9 using the RPP shell they got when they bought RailPower Products. We have several of the P2K SD9/7's on the club layout, and while they are better in the shell dept, the older Athearns run better. I love the idea with the Brass channel for holding the light LED"s and keeping the shell easily removable. I hate pulling the shells on my INRD units as the LED wiring for my headlights has to be unsoldered most times. Cheers Mike

 

[AyTrane]

I have hardwired decoders into four of my Athearn blue boxes so far, and have done the "Athearn Mod" on two of them. With enough lubrication (I use Petroleum Jelly...seriously) the noise in the gear boxes is gone. If your flywheels are causing vibration, turn one of them 90 degrees and sometimes this will eliminate the problem.

I will have to look into using something to hold the lights, I have wires mounted to the inside of the roof, and it limits how far I can take off the shell. I was thinking about quick connects, but the simpler solution would be to chassis mount the lights.