i have a problem and i am serious

[Tom]

I don't have Kato. I model the Santa Fe and Kato has never ever come out with anything with an accurate yellow for the Santa Fe blue & yellow frieght scheme. In addition I've never seen two Kato models with the same shade of yellow. I'm talking about gp30 and a gp35 for instance, not 2 models from the same production run. I've bought P2k Alco Pa, Emd E9. In the process of moving the models from one train show to the next, most of the plastic detail have broken off, so I'm going to have to replace all of the plastic details with brass details because. Of the need to handle models more when operating in a modular club. As a result, I always buy Athearn Blue Box when the model has the correct width hood, and is available in the model I want. I buy p2k as a last resort, if the model I want is not offered as an Athearn blue box, but I plan from the start to strip off all plastic details and redo them with brass and repaint before I will show up with one at a train show. If I buy an Athearn r-t-r, the plastic hand rails are stripped off first thing. There is no such thing as a plastic handrail that is not worthless. They are either vastly oversize, or they are so weak that they bend and don't return to the correct shape the first time you take the model out of the box.

I always tune up my Athearn blue box locomotives using Jim Fuhrman's recomendations on this link, and they run as smoothly and quietly as any Kato in the club.
By the way, I also rewire all of my Athearn blue box and r-t-r locomotives with Jim's 5 wire system in the link in the center of the page.

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I love the detailed scale plastic handrails for their appearance, I hate their fragility. For several of my Proto 2000 geeps, I ended up replacing the handrails with metal handrails from Athearn (they fit like a glove on the GP7's and GP9's). I have a WP bicentennial GP40 here that I am detailing for my brother and he was having a heck of a time even getting it in the box the other night due to the plastic handrails. They are a real pain. Good idea in theory, but if you take your engines to other layouts to run like we do, they are worthless.

Thankfully, Athearn still has their metal handrails available and they are nearly bulletproof.