Removing plastic handrails intact from Athearn HO RTR locomotives?


granite

granite

New Member
I am thinking about buying an HO scale Athearn 'Ready To Roll' locomotive for a repaint/re-detail project, but would need to remove the handrails intact and re-apply them after completing repainting.

Have any of you tried this before? I don't have any previous experience working with the RTR locos, so am not sure if the handrails are glued in. I attempted this once with a Walthers Trainline loco, and no matter how careful and slowly I went, the handrails were just too fragile and broke.
 
You'll have to look inside the shell. If the parts are heat staked you'll see blobs of melted plastic where grabs and rails pass through inside, you'll have to cut these off before removing the parts. Can be a tedious affair! If they are glued try a debonder from inside the shell and see if that will loosen them.
 
Unless some-one has glued them in, most, if not all, RTR's for a long time now have handrails, detail parts that are a press fit into holes in the body. Gently prising them out will remove them.
 
I use the tip of a #11 blade to gently pry them out if they haven't come out already.
 
Was gonn'a say, most of us complain about how many bits have fallen off whilst they're running on the layout. The only glue I have so far found lately was on my new Genesis DDA40X. That was where the fuel tank support strap on the side walkways is pressed into the walkway edge. On the prototype it's obviously there to help support the tank at the back, but on the model it's not attached to the tank so that the tank can be removed. One of mine was loose anyway and swinging around, could've fallen off at anytime, glad I spotted it first.
 
Most of the Athearn RTR diesel handrails will pop off the 1st time you touch the shell or just look at them cross eyed. >)
 
cajon said:
Most of the Athearn RTR diesel handrails will pop off the 1st time you touch the shell or just look at them cross eyed. >)
Click to expand...

This guy knows what's up lol! I don't think Athearn glues the hand rails in. Most of mine have fallen out while the engines were sitting still. You can take anything small and pry them out. Even a fingernail works fine.
 
Very little is glued on by any of the manufacturers these days. No time for that in the factories now. I remember reading in one of Jason Shron's (Rapido trains) blogs, how the workers in his Chinese factory applied the detail parts using chopsticks and how adept they were doing it.
 
I would take that story of Jason's with a grain of salt.He tends to tell very tall tales at times. ;)
 
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