New announcements from Athearn this morning included a run of Genesis GP50s. A few years ago, Athearn offered a "Frisco" GP50 in the as delivered version with an orange number of 3100, and another with the BN patch as well. Athearn has started producing items in their "Legendary Liveries" series, essentially their term for what-if projects. This new offering comes from that series as a what-if the Frisco received their GP50s with the intended 790 series numbers before the merger was official. Also worth noting, Athearn has added some upgrades to their locomotives since the last Frisco offering came out. We now will have number board lights and class lights in addition to the standard headlights, beacon and gyra light. There are 3 numbers in this offering, 791, 794 and 797. MSRP doesn't appear to have moved up much yet, we'll have to keep an eye on that with the tariff situation (no, that's not an invitation to start a tariff argument in this thread). $229.99 DCC ready, $329.99 for Tsunami 2. A quick check of Midwest MRR shows the MSRP higher than the flier amount. They had made an announcement last week about the tariff situation, so I'm willing to bet the higher MSRP, $249/$349, is probably correct and Athearn forgot to update the fliers before posting. Midwest gives a street price of $212/$297 Sorry this had to be such a long product announcement post, but I wanted to be sure to cover everything. I'm excited for these, I'll just have to renumber my first run GP50s around these 3. https://www.athearn.com/on/demandwa...uncements/april-2025/03_GENHO_GP50_042525.pdf
Yeah, what if? In reality, the locomotive originally designated to be SLSF #790 was delivered as Frisco #3100, then patched with black stenciled BN 3100 over the red 3100 on the cab. All the rest were delivered to the BN in BN Cascade Green livery in the 3101 - 3109 number series. BN #3100 as delivered. EMD Builder's Photo. BN #3100 patched. Lin Coone photo, Mark Davies collection.
