I had some handrail damage with one of my new Genesis SLSF GP15-1s. I asked for replacement parts last week and they arrived today. Athearn gets an A+ in my book for customer service.
Rick - Agree with your comments regarding Athearn service. Two examples - o Some time back, I bought a Mobile & Ohio Athearn Genesis 4-6-2 Pacific. It looked great, but when I put it on the track to run it, it sounded like an impact mill like we used at several of our plants. Athearn had me ship it to them via insured Priority Mail. About ten days later, I had it back along with a check for my shipping cost. It ran like a Swiss watch. o About three months ago, I decided to finally fix all the clunking Proto 2000 GP's I had. Athearn has the best deal on the replacement axle gear (though they are expensive). Called in the order, talked to a real friendly fellow who really knew his stuff, and had them a week later. No more P2K's clunking in my house! Ken
Wonder if Athearn has replacement rubber bands for the old Hi-F drive diesels? They ran like a greased pig but like an old Chevy or Ford, will run as good today as they did when they came out of the yellow box. Atlas´ Turbo (a short fat version of the Deutsche Reischbahn´s Zeppelin train of the 30s?) was mounted on the Hustler frame and was Hi-F powered too. A pity Athearn doesn´t rerun the Hustler with gear drive. Lionel and Marx versions had gear drives. Mabie not top of the line but Athearn´s starter set with Hustler, 2 freight cars, caboose and oval of 18" Atlas brass curved track and MRC´s hand-held power pack got a kid with a paperboy´s wages into HO for around 20 bucks! It did tick off the cows in my yellow Katy stock car that came with the set since the train flew around the oval at high speed and didn´t only make them dizzy but turned their milk into cream as well! The Varney Frisco 40 ft. double door boxcar that I bought as a first addition to the freight car roster stole the show though!!! I think I ordered it from AHC (America´s Hobby Center) who ran full page ads in Model Railroader every month. Model Power still catalogues the old Marx Hustler and a DDT diesel switcher which is really larger than HO scale. A lot of narrow gaugers use it for Sn3 and On3. Perfect for a switcher to switch a tie treating plant, rarely modeled on any layouts in any scale! Joe Toth
Joe - I bought one of the same Varney 40ft double door boxcars in about 1963 while I was a student at MSM, also from AHC ! This was the first factory painted Frisco freight car I had - quite a prize back then. It looked good except for the coonskin, which I thought was not very well done. I soon replaced it with a decal from Walthers that was just a smidge bigger, which worked well. Younger modelers today do not realize how rare decent HO kit and RTR cars decorated for the SLSF were back in those days. We live in a relative time of plenty today! Ken
Ken, you probably remember burning a lot of midnight oil in your bedroom checking off all the neat HO you wanted but couldn´t afford. The Varney Frisco box and Ulrich metal hopper car were "Musts". I didn´t alter the coonskin herald nor did I repaint my Athearn Hustler. I wish that Athearn had offered it in black with yellow stripes (Frisco) and red with yellow stripes (Katy). It was a neat low cost diesel to get a teenager into HO just the same. A pity Athearn didn´t offer more color combinations. You are so right about the modelers today who cannot imigine how it was to model railroad in the late 50s and early 60s with an interest in the Frisco! Do you remember the matchbooks that the Frisco handed out that came packaged in a 40 foot Frisco boxcar made out of cardboard? I had considered reinforcing it with a basswood interior and jerry-rigging it onto an Athearn underframe and metal weight! Talk about desperate for Frisco rolling stock? Of course Champ and Walthers did a thriving business with me as I would have Chester Holley in Tampa order me the decals. I worked for him part time in his train shop and dusted off his tinplate train collection and even cut the grass on his riding lawnmower. I sweat like a pig on a flatcar but the $ he paid me did buy the decals and other supplies including rubber bands for my "high tech" Hi-F drive Athearn diesels! Despite the fact we now live in the Golden Age of Model Railroading with just about anything one can imigine from Z scale to G to live steam, I still miss those innocent days of youth. The memories are somewhat tarnished now but I look back on the fellowship that I had with the area model rail brass hats of the early 60s while I was in high school. At Chester´s we were all treated equal and the Old Hats would carry on converstions with us teens too. Bobbye Hall´s Hobby House in Dallas was the same way. A real pity that some shops today lack this show of welcome to newcomers who visit them for the first time. No wonder several have closed. Many blame it on Internet sales but a cold Dr. Pepper out of the ice filled Coke box at Chester´s or the cup of good black coffee out of the pot that was always simmering next to the Coke machine in Bobbye´s is what makes a hobby shop thrive. So much easier to return a defective product and talk to a real human being across the counter than some stranger over the phone. Despite the great service most of the manufactures provide there is still a great void when another hobby shop closes its doors. The personal touch disappears and the lack of chat with fellow modelers seems to take some of the enjoyment out of the hobby itself. Please all, support your local dealers if at all possible and the Frisco Friendly Folks who produce Frisco products like Oddballs Decals! Only then will this hobby survive and continue to bring the personal touch we all don´t realize it is there until we drive to our dealer only to find the doors shut and locked forever! Joe Toth
