Acceptable detail, good running

The subject line pretty much sums it up for me. Detail you can fix, if necessary, with plastic and glue. A poor running mechanism otoh, usually needs to be replaced.

While I didn't intend for this to happen, every single locomotive on my layout is an Atlas product.

All of the Locomotives I will

All of the Locomotives I will use on my layout are Bachman Spectrum (Steam only). They are excellent runners and the detail is excellent, that being said, the details are very delicate so extra care must be taken when handling them. I run very old Athearn BB SD40-T2's and SD45's on our club layout. The old BB Athearns are over 30 years old and still run like a top and during club setups we run for 12 to 14 hours a day for 3 days. I just keep them lubed and very clean. I have added lots of DW and other details to my DIesels. I will be adding DCC to my steam locos as soon as I get my DCC system and layout built. That will make them run even better, I hope. I have a very good friend who has had lots of trouble with the new Genesis and Atlas units and has decided to not purchase them anymore. He is always on the look out for the Athearn BB units. In my opinion he doesn't need anymore locos.

I prefer all of my units to run great and look great with lots of detail and weathering of course. Sound is important but not until I get them going. I will put in sound when I add the decoders. So, I guess that I want it all.

I've got a variety of locos on the Siskiyou Line

I've got locos from many manufacturers on my HO Siskiyou Line: Athearn Blue Box, Athearn RTR, LifeLike Proto 2000, Atlas, Kato, even a few brass locos. No Bachmann, though.

To me, as a serious operator, the loco first and foremost must run well. As Jeff says, the details can be fixed for the most part. Poor running performance tends to eat at me until I do something about it.

The best runners of the lot are the Kato and Atlas locos. The Athearn Blue Box are actually kind of in the middle, as are the Athearn RTR (my SD45T-2s and SD40T-2s), and the worst of the lot are the brass locos and the LifeLike Proto 2000s.

The LifeLikes (my SD9s) have pretty good detail, but their electrical pickup leaves a lot to be desired. I've tried many things to address the issue, but the problem seems to be a fundamental design flaw in the trucks. They have a soft copper plate through which the wheel axle tips extend - and once the locos have a few miles on them, the holes in the soft copper wears enough that the axle tips no longer touch the copper on flat level track. The loco can have perfectly clean wheels, perfectly clean copper plates, and when sitting on flat level track, NONE of the six wheels will pick up power. Very annoying.

I'm not saying every LifeLike loco has issues like this, but their SD9s certainly have been something of a disappointment as they age and their power pickup becomes intermittent at best.

I've tried a number of things to fix this issue, with limited success. I've pretty much resigned to replacing the guts of the LifeLikes with ProtoPower West mechanisms. The PPW mechanisms were designed to fit under the RailPower SD9 shell - which is almost indentical to the LL shell in it's overall dimensions - so it turns out a LL SD9 shell drops right onto the PPW mechanism with almost no work! This lets me keep the beautiful LikeLike SD9 shells, which is very appealing to me.

Durability

I'll have to see how the BlueLine SD9 and the P2k Berkshires hold up.  I don't have a lot of confidence in the SD9 which is unfortunate as it's going into yard duty at some point.  Mostly because the drivetrain seems rather average.  Or rather, because the vast majority of the fleet is Atlas, Kato, or Genesis, the drive in the BlueLine seems well below average.  Hopefully I won't run into any odd issues like the old P2k gear splitting.  I'm guessing I won't ever really see issues with the Berks as they don't really fit into the current scheme and will be doing "excursions" so they'll never get the mileage the others do.  OTOH, if I ever decide to backdate to a different time I can see them racking up some miles.  They've got some spectacular detail on them though.

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S

roster

Most of my engines are from Kato and LifeLike. I want good running engines. That's very important for me. If an engine runs good with DC, it will run better with DCC. If it runs quiet, a sound decoder will be worth.

Details and paint job comes second. From 5 feet distance this is not so important. But I will not buy a bad paint job.

Wolfgang

Reliable running equipment

I've retired all of my old locomotives from the late 1970s and earky 1980s. In their place I now have a roster of 2 Kato F40PHs, 2 Kato SD80MACs, 1Kato SD70MAC, 1Kato GG-1 and 1 Walthers/LifeLike GP-38-2. All but the GP-38-2 have decoders installed. They all run great but I haven't installed all of the details on them. Why? They're N-Scale locomotives and using the 3 foot rule, if you don't see it, it isn't necessary right now.

Now why did I retire my old stuff? They were a combination of Minitrix, Bachman, Life Like and Atlas locomotives. Some ran well (the Trix) but not quite like what the new ones. Others didn't run well at all (Atlas). I still have these because I don't think they're worth anything. Otherwise I would have tried to sell them. So they sit in a drawer except for the Trix engines which I have been known to run on the club layout.

Irv

locomotives

I have never been a fan of tower55. I read recently that the tooling has been sold to athearn, and that oriental inc is shutting down their plastic division (tower 55).

as for me I mainly go with Atlas, recent Athearn (not BB),  P2K, and some of the newer Stewart stuff.

Tower 55 Never released a NS

Tower 55 NS unit

Hmm....  Well, it said NS on the box and it was a newer unit, possibly an SD70ACE.  In any event I guess it's all moot since further digging shows Tower 55 as defunct.  All plastics tooling sold off to Athearn.  I'm not at all interested in getting a one off unit/drive that might be nearly impossible to fix if something should go awry.  I guess I might be in the same boat with my limited lifetime warranty P2k Heritage Berkshires as well since Walthers took them over.  Either way, I'll pass on any of the T55 stuff.

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S

I'm sure OMI will still have

Good running loco

I prefer a good running loco. I can add or change all the detail and new paint myself.

Loco preference

Kato is a good smooth runner and quit

Another Kato Majority

I never consciously planned it this way, but more than half of the locos in my active fleet are Kato ... must be a reason for that...

Re: Kato majority

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This is a shot of my first Bachmann Spectrum loco, it is an N scale Consolidation, I was delighted by the way it looked and ran.  I will be seriously looking to offload my older lifelike stuff and switch over to Spectrum or Atlas.

Old Locos

I got an older atlas loco on eBay without realizing it. I was complaining about it when my wife asked me how bad can it really be? I put the 10 year old RS-18 next to two modern Atlas GP-38s and she was blown away but the difference in quality.

I only lost $26 but I learned an important lesson.. there is no going back when it comes to locomotive quality.

I may be able to detail and modify it to modern standards, but by then I will have spent a small fortune.

Chris

Why stuff costs more

Here's a clear illustration why today's locos cost what they do. If we suddenly went back to the motor quality of 20-40 years ago, modelers would be screaming to high heaven.

I know prices also go up because of inflation, but the cool thing about todays models for the most part is once you factor out the price increase for inflation, what we're paying for today's models is just a bit more than the "good old days" prices - yet the quality of the models we have today would have boggled the minds of modelers back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

PK2 Locomotives

I have a good mix of Athearn SD40-2s and SD50s and a lot of PK2 Locos (mostly GP units) that I have picked up at what I thought were good prices. My wife gave me an Atlas MP15 (KCS) with sound last year for Christmas and it runs and sounds great.

Joe's experience with his PK2 SD9s has me concerned.  I need to build of roster of KCS and BN locos to hual long coal trains on my KCS layout.  I recently purchased a new set of PK2 BN SD45s on EBay.   They are still in the box waiting for the Digitrax DH165LO decoders to arrive.  I did have a set of three BN Atlas C30 locos which worked great, but were stolen during a recent move.

Because of my job situation (on the road) I have been working on building my locomotive and rolling stock fleet.  Maybe I should stick with Athearn and Atlas or KATO (if I can find them); and stay away from PK2?

I would appreciate hearing from additional PK2 users before I get any more.

THANKS

My P2K's run fine! The FA's,

My P2K's run fine! The FA's, BL2s, Gp9's and Gp35's run as well if not better than my Athearn BB's, but not as quiet and smooth as my Atlas and Kato units, but then again, I didn't pay as much for them. Of course, every one of the P2K units has had the axle gears replaced at one point or another. One FA has had them twice. After that, Athearn gears became my standard replacement part for them. They are beefier!

I've also got a few Spectrum F's and F40's. They run great, but have an annoying rattle in each that I have never been able to pin down. Has anyone else had this, and maybe fixed it? It's not the shell, They do it when the shell is off. Sounds like a gear rattle, and 1 unit only does it in reverse. It is also not terribly loud. Maybe nothing a good sound decoder couldn't drown out?  

More about P2K's

I have a mixture of Atlas, Athearn (Genesis and RTR), BLI and Proto 2000. I did have some Kato but sold them as they were outside my modeling period, although they were probably the best runners.

Now, regards P2K, I have a number of GP7's and GP30's and a GP9.

http://riansgeneralphotos.fotopic.net/p48608685.html

Other than the axle / gear problem, which is now history, they all do sterling work on my layout and are 'nearly' as good as the Atlas. Slow running is possible, well, with decoders installed, I set them for a maximum low speed anyway, partly because I model branchline operations and partly so when my niece and nephew used to come over, they couldn't run the trains very fast.....!!

Brian

Diesels

It's pretty rare that I have the oportunity to choose the manufacturer.  Not like I can say I'm going to pass on the Athearn SD45T-2 and wait for the Kato to come out.  Even if I could, Kato's laid a few eggs, too (early SD40-2).

That said, I have a pair of Atlas U23Bs waiting for enough time on my workbench to serve as the power for my OMI TE70-4s models.  My ALCO models DH643 is awaiting trucks from a Bachmann E33 (which is going to be challenging).  I also have an ALCO models RSD-12 that, like it's prototype, now rides on Atlas RSD-5 trucks (Alco reused the trucks from RSD-5s SP traded in).  And when I really get bored, there's a Halmark U30CG waiting for an Atlas U-boat C drive. (non-SP power takes a seat in the far back corner of the workbench).  I guess there's a trend - Atlas drives and components are my prefered source.

It's disturbing to hear reports of Athearn Genesis drives being, ahem, flakey?  I have about 6 Highliner F-unit shells, and they're going to need drives.  I guess I'm going to have to get PPW F-unit drives, and mill down the fuel tank area a bit to use the Genesis F-unit tank (I need 1,500 gallon tanks for these SP critters).

I've also been considering repowering the SD45T-2s and SD40T-2 I have.  Used to be the Canon EN-22 motor was a good and economical upgrade to any Athearn engine, especially when fitted with PPW flywheels.  Not certain what's the current state of the art.  Seems for a while, people became very happy with the Athearn open frame motor after they did some improvement (about the time the AC4400CW was introduced, IIRC).  LL cloned the Athearn motor, and ended up with one that ran better.  Put a bit of egg on Athearn's face, if you ask me.  But it also showed them that the basic design could and should be improved on without too much additional expense.

Joe - on those SD-9s, can the P2K models simply be retrucked with Athearn trucks?  Seems to me that would be a lot simpler and cheaper than going with a full PPW chassis.  The fuel tank is still the cast pot-metal fuel tank from the Athearn frame - the plastic P2K tank looks a lot better.  If at all possible, I'd stick with the P2K frame and tank, and try and work out the other issues.  I'll have to take a look at some of my Caddilacs and see what's possible.

Merry Christmas!

- Arved
From a little too close to CSX milepost 666

Interesting info on Tower 55

Yes I know its an old thread, but I think I learned something. I had recently been considering the purchase of a Tower 55 model engine. I thought I recall they had quite a good recommendation,...as does much of Ajin stuff from Korea.

But after reading the reviews here, I think I will pass.