Athearn flooded the market with many of their products and they sat on brick and mortar hobby shop shelves sometimes for years. Athearn did deplete the steel stock of flywheels, so I'm not surprised you found locomotives with the steel flywheels. I had to order brass from them in order to bring my fleet of diesels up to speed.
Like it or not Athearn (ATH) Blue Box (BB) locomotives set the standard for HO scale locomotives back when. And like has been said before, the innovations Athearn made, lead to scale width hoods and many other detail standards, all wheel drive, pickup, and so forth. I have shaved off many cast on grab irons. The thing I most like about ATH BB locos is the steel handrails, you can literally pick up these engines by the handrails, they don't break. You know what I dislike about plastic handrails is how short they can be. And by that, I am saying the plastic handrails are maybe removed from the molds too soon and withdraw to the point they don't fit the loco anymore, this drives me crazy, hand rails waaay too short and he stantions are slanted when mounted. Many cottage industries prospered with detail parts for the BB locos as well, and we learned a bit about cutting, splicing, sectioning hood components to make different models as well. All in all, not sure I would be a Model RR if not for Athearns BB line, and it's innovations. Many great opines on this thread. I do enjoy it. Tom
