Has anyone recieved their new athearn ready to roll tunnel motors yet? I got 3 of them today and it appears to be a very nice unit. The only question I have is with the fuel tank. The model appears to have the longer tank. Is it just my imagination, or did Athearn install the wrong tank? The prototype units show a much shorter tank. Were there certain orders from EMD that had the longer tank? or were all of the units bought for the Rio Grande ordered with the shorter tank?
D&RGW units had short tanks. I have IM N scale units, and all have shorter tanks than the Cotton Belt unit:
That is really noticable on the Intermountain model I checked those out at the hobby store. They are really spectacular. What was the fuel gallon capacity of the Tunnel motors used on the Grande?
I still haven't received my order yet but Athearn was supposed to include the shorter fuel tank with the D&RGW tunnel motors. Is that not the case?
Got both of mine, no problem Jim, I recieved both the 5371 & the no # one I ordered from RGMHS and both have the short fuel tanks as you'd expect. ?!? I'm happy, these are the best effort Athearn has done to date IMO. You will really be happy with these, I know I am. Can't wait to see what they do with the SD45, wahoo!!! 2slim
Me 2 slim! BTW, here is a photo someone shared of the Athearn D&RGW tunnel motors. The fuel tank looks shorter to me. The longer fuel tank, as on the SP units doesn't leave that gap at the front behind the lead truck: Picasa Web Albums - Nathan - Athearn HO-Sc...
It does look shorter than the standard tank. It may be just that it appears longer because of the shiny black frame. Some weathering will fix this. I am very pleased with this model as well. I was pretty excited to have the opportunity to buy these. A hundred times better than the original tooling. I also picked up another SD50 These have nice tread plate detail, cab air deflectors, and the oval lift holes in the pilots. I plan to add those things to the new tunnel motors. The gyralight in the nose is really nice to have. It will save me a lot of time adding on a details west part which involves some cutting and body work to get it to look right.
