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Athearn Genesis Diesels Locos and rolling stock
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Active Member 61 posts aileron44 Active Member 61 posts
aileron44

Gentlemen,

I'm trying to get back into model railroading and I'm thinking of getting my feet wet by jumping in with much gusto!  I'm thinking of buying the Athearn Genesis F7 A/B SP Black Widow paint scheme diesels. 

My question is this: considering quality, functionality, cost comparison, and one's personal knowledge and ability, is it a better idea (worth it) to buy the locos without DCC and sound and install aftermarket components or buy them already so equipped? 

I don't have a layout yet but I'm in the process of joining a local MRRC so I'll have access to one.  I realize that without DCC I may not be able to run these locos on the club layout until the are equipped with DCC.

My views on buying them without DCC & sound:

  • Judging by what  "good" aftemarket decoders costs, this might not be a big issue either way 
  • I've never installed or refitted an engine/decoder in an HO loco before but I have enough faith in my intelligence, dexterity and abibilty to read, understand, and figure things out that I don't see this as a big issue either.
  • So that just leaves quality and functionality.  Since I don't know much about the quality or functionality of Athearn motors/decoders, I can't say much. 

So, I have to rely on the knowledge and experience of you veteran model railroaders out there.  To repeat myself, what do you recommend: buy the locos with DCC & sound already to go or buy them without and install aftermarket stuff later.

Jorge
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betsy662 Regular poster 153 posts
betsy662

Since the bulk of the newer

Since the bulk of the newer Genesis locomotives come already equipped with DCC, if you choose to buy the non-DCC model, for whatever reason, DCC would simply be plug and play, since all of the newer stuff is pretty much set up for DCC from the factory, Athearn uses a fairly decent decoder from what I understand of it, and it is a duel mode decoder, so you would be able to run it both on DCC and DC layouts, same with the sound decoder, and Athearn does provide a little handheld remote control unit which will work the sounds for you on a DC layout.
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santa fe 1958 Regular poster 393 posts
santa fe 1958

Older models

I can only comment on the older Genesis F3 / F7 models, in that they are not the easiest to install a decoder in. Most of the problem came from changing over the bulbs, in that they appeared to be fixed into the body shell!

Fitting a decoder was easy in comparison.

 

Brian

 

Brian

Deadwood City Railroad, modeling a Santa Fe branch line in the 1960's!

http://deadwoodcityrailroad.blogspot.co
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red p New member 26 posts
red p

2 more on the way

I have one already and 2 more on the way. I have not taken on the job of installing decoders. However im going to start doing that in some other projects. The Genesis units I have have the decoders already in them, So I really dont know how hard it would be to install one. If this is a first dcc engine I would go ahead and get the factory installed decoder, that way you will have something to play with

I work for Norfolk Southern, but model Penn Central
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bigstew New member 21 posts
bigstew

Athearn Genesis

I have only one Athearn Genesis engine, an EMD SD45-2 fitted with MRC DCC and sound.  I also have five other engines with DCC and sound made by BLI, Atlas and Proto 2000, all of which have the QSI systems installed.  Out of the six the Athearn unit with MRC DCC has been the fly in the ointment.  I have heard thru the grapevine that MRC have reliability issues and that Athearn may be changing over to QSI.   I am seriously considering converting my genesis unit to use the QSI Revolution-A DCC soundboard .  

  http://www.qsisolutions.com/products/techinfo/revolution/q-revo_installations.html  This is a link to the QSI webpage that has technical info for what you are talking about.
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