GEC's Layout Progress

[FCIN]

I think i've hit a different sort of problem with my Athearn Genesis GP15-1. Does anyone know what the wheels are actually made of? I clean up the wheels with a bright boy, but when i did, i notices a discolored area along where the rails would contact the wheels. Instead of the usual nickel silver look, it had a more coppery color, and it almost seemed pitted. The locomotive runs fine now, but i have never seen anything like that on my Atlas, P2k, Bachmann, or other Athearn locomotives.

Perhaps this is the source of the weird problems with the GP15-1s i keep hearing about?

GEC;

I finally got my Athearn GP15-1 running the other day. Not sure what I did to get it running other than I found the wheels on the rear truck were all out of gauge (too narrow) and the rear truck was not supplying power to the model. Once I corrected the wheel gauge, it started running just fine, and has continued to run okay.

But I have noticed that copper color where the wheels contact the rail. You don't suppose that the wheels are brass with a nickel silver plating do you? Sure has got me wondering. If this loco was going to be my main power for the layout, perhaps I'd look into replacing the wheel sets. For now, I'll just run it off and on and see what happens.