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Post by csx3305 on Mar 2, 2019 8:15:53 GMT -8
I haven’t bought any of the most recent run, but I have seen discussions on it elsewhere (Facebook). To me “40 series cab” implies the pre Dash 2 cab, which if true, is just all kinds of wrong.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2019 8:19:19 GMT -8
Regarding inspection of each and every single item:
Maybe Spring Mills does that, but I'm sure nobody else does that.
Even Overland Models, with brass, did NOT do that. My buddy who is still a train store manager can prove that. They even sent back "defective" models that Overland failed to fix and then actually sent BACK to the store as having been "repaired". Since they sold significant numbers of Overland Models, they put up with the QA/QC issues as best they could. But some dogs went out, at a discounted price. Everything sold eventually. Some were painters and could "fix" the lemons. Others were mechanically fantastic and could fix the drives. WE had a friend who'd put up to 40 hours into fixing any one model but then they ran like a Swiss watch! He bought 3 and 4 units of everything, articulated steamers in pairs, even!
I can 100% guarantee that the larger HO manufacturers do NOT inspect each and every model. There is not time nor staff nor money to do that. The models come in from customs in the morning, receive a cursory test inspection (and updated photographs for the websites), and start going out the very same day to all the distributors. Only a handful of models get opened and that's the truth (I've been at the importer on the day the models arrived from US Customs). They absolutely do not want MBK getting their items before everybody else, so great effort is made to get them out to all the dealers and distributors basically at the same time, or within a day. Even then, MBK gets theirs sometimes prior to others, and then some people actually complain to the importers about that.
I know some simply won't believe me, but great pains are made to get them out to everybody so that nobody has a particular "sales advantage" over the other guys. The relatively lowly paid importer employees really hustle to get them out fast. They earn their wages. |
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Post by thunderhawk on Mar 2, 2019 8:28:21 GMT -8
The decline of the diesel detailer forum in favor of FB is disappointing. Of course it would help if the forum didn't have 50 sub forums making it very user "un"friendly.
FB is good for prototype specific modeling groups and such, but as stated previously it's a pain to search for specific posts.
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Post by thunderhawk on Mar 2, 2019 8:31:12 GMT -8
I haven’t bought any of the most recent run, but I have seen discussions on it elsewhere (Facebook). To me “40 series cab” implies the pre Dash 2 cab, which if true, is just all kinds of wrong. You state yourself you don't know for sure that it's wrong yet you are bitching about Athearn getting it wrong? |
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Post by carrman on Mar 2, 2019 8:45:30 GMT -8
The Chessie SD50's from this current run have the 40 series cab, most notable error is the presence of the louvers for the hot water type cab heater on the cab front in front of the engineer.
Dave
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Post by csx3305 on Mar 2, 2019 9:22:20 GMT -8
You state yourself you don't know for sure that it's wrong yet you are bitching about Athearn getting it wrong? Nah, just informing. And it was confirmed in the previous post, so..... |
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Post by stottman on Mar 2, 2019 9:51:52 GMT -8
Agreed about Facebook. I don't understand the overall obsession with the site. Yes, I have been to it and after 30 minutes of holding my mouse and scrolling, didn't really gain much valuable content other than the odd good photo or posting buried among a bunch of emoticons and 'i like trainns to' type postings. Huge waste of time, not to mention the sacrifice in privacy we offer them. I'll stay here where complete sentences and searchability still exist. The signal ratio here is very high once the 'block user' feature is established. Back to topic, I am sorry to hear about those individuals losing their jobs. Hopefully they all received the severance they were owed and will not experience personal hardships. I find the opposite. The amount of prototype photos that are posted are invaluable. |
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Post by thebessemerkid on Mar 2, 2019 9:54:24 GMT -8
From CSX3305 "Then there's the ol' chestnuts like this one. I'll narrow it down for ya, it ain't the cab, but it is a glaring error and it is locationally close to the cab: www.athearn.com/Products/Default.aspx?ProdID=ATH80423Ouch, that hurts, that shouldn't be an issue with that model. Do the other road numbers from this run have the same issue, or is this a one-off issue? Russ What is the "not the wrong cab but near it" error? |
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Post by fr8kar on Mar 2, 2019 10:20:22 GMT -8
Huge waste of time, not to mention the sacrifice in privacy we offer them. Bingo. Not a week goes by without some news story involving Facebook and privacy. I'd rather miss out on the photos and information than let Zuckerberg into my life. |
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Post by nstophat on Mar 2, 2019 15:14:44 GMT -8
From CSX3305 "Then there's the ol' chestnuts like this one. I'll narrow it down for ya, it ain't the cab, but it is a glaring error and it is locationally close to the cab: www.athearn.com/Products/Default.aspx?ProdID=ATH80423Ouch, that hurts, that shouldn't be an issue with that model. Do the other road numbers from this run have the same issue, or is this a one-off issue? Russ What is the "not the wrong cab but near it" error? The blue on the nose is supposed to touch the anti-skid on top of the nose, not have a yellow separation stripe in between.... Russ |
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Post by thebessemerkid on Mar 2, 2019 17:05:10 GMT -8
What is the "not the wrong cab but near it" error? The blue on the nose is supposed to touch the anti-skid on top of the nose, not have a yellow separation stripe in between.... Russ Thank you! |
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Post by Judge Doom on Mar 2, 2019 17:15:09 GMT -8
The decline of the diesel detailer forum in favor of FB is disappointing. Of course it would help if the forum didn't have 50 sub forums making it very user "un"friendly. FB is good for prototype specific modeling groups and such, but as stated previously it's a pain to search for specific posts. Yeah, that always seemed pretty dumb, namely having manufacturer sub-forums that were rarely or ever used. And 5 different for-sale forums. The previous owner (who unfortunately passed away a few years back) didn't seem to be the best or most judicial person to be running the page however. That's partially why I stopped visiting, and because a number of higher profile members left because of censorship or post deletion issues. There was some really nice modeling being posted, and one day you come back and those build threads are missing. There are some very useful groups on Facebook — with factual content rather than the opinions sprouted here. And there is a search function which lets you find old content, just as one would search here. Overall, the signal-to-noise ratio is getting worse here. Personally, I get my information from a mix of sites; for subject-focussed questions I turn to groups.io and/or specialised Facebook groups — not here. I get the feeling most people complaining here about Facebook are visiting those low-quality pages where modelers are posting images of their Bachmann models on layouts full of toy trucks, or those railfan pages full of foamers posting crooked train photos and going goo-goo-ga-ga over Heritage units. They need to sift through the site more to find the gems, as there's a lot of pages with really top-notch modeling, prototype discussion and excellent prototype photos being posted. Many of them are closed or secret to reduce the clutter and keep a tighter group focus. Much of that kind of model RR discussion used to go on on the Yahoo groups, but most have either died off, moved to Facebook, or transferred the Group to groups.io. I belonged to about 30-40 back in the heyday, but the content on most now is a trickle or non-existent compared to the aforementioned Facebook groups, not to mention Facebook's far superior interface when it comes to sharing photos or getting prompt responses about something. Heck, even on this forum people can't upload images to the site itself, which adds one more inconvenience to sharing a project or prototype image. In the case of the parallel Yahoo/Groups.io and Facebook RR pages I belong to, the Facebook ones hands-down have much more activity and way better content. All of this is not to mention all the data breaches and hackings Yahoo's had over the past while. And the buggy "Neo" interface they switched to a number of years ago against protest from loyal users. And a bit off-topic, but regarding all the fear-mongering over privacy: a lot of that is warranted. But, a lot of that is unavoidable unless you go totally off the grid. If you have a cellphone you can be tracked (and probably are without knowing it by Google, and the apps you are using or have installed as many ask to access your location and contacts lists when you install them). Tech and social media companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc are using your smartphone, Google searches, Alexa commands, Amazon purchase records, etc to track your browsing, web movements, interests, likes/dislikes, what you buy, what you search for, and potentially even listening to you to compile information about you in what some have termed a "shadow profile" to sell to advertisers on their sites for content targeting, or to push ads and content catered to your interests. It ain't just about cookie tracking these days - the only way to really avoid all that is to ditch the smartphone, ditch the internet, and go totally off the grid. Most people won't, and to most it's all very tin-foil-hat-ish as they conveniently browse Amazon to buy the latest gee-wiz thing they saw their friend post on Facebook, while asking Alexa what the weather will be like tomorrow. The smart do what you do here: simply use an alias, or make a throw-away account with no profile information or no friends just to log in and visit the groups you like. Shadow profiles aside, to a certain extent sites like Facebook and Google only get as much information as you're giving them. |
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Post by carrman on Mar 2, 2019 17:20:00 GMT -8
That's why I left that forum.
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Post by roadkill on Mar 2, 2019 17:23:22 GMT -8
What is the "not the wrong cab but near it" error? The blue on the nose is supposed to touch the anti-skid on top of the nose, not have a yellow separation stripe in between.... Russ The printed instead of tooled "mail slot" looks like crap, too. |
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Post by TBird1958 on Mar 2, 2019 19:32:04 GMT -8
There are some very useful groups on Facebook — with factual content rather than the opinions sprouted here. And there is a search function which lets you find old content, just as one would search here. Overall, the signal-to-noise ratio is getting worse here. Personally, I get my information from a mix of sites; for subject-focussed questions I turn to groups.io and/or specialised Facebook groups — not here. I'm just chiming in on the Facebook groups, the 1970's modeling group on FB is excellent, great photos posted by well known photographers - an incredible resource! I really enjoy sharing a bit of my work there too. |
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Post by brakie on Mar 2, 2019 19:32:32 GMT -8
I belong to three groups on FB,A switching layout group, a industry group and a gaming group.. I haven't visited Athearn's site in years.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2019 22:22:39 GMT -8
Well, looking at the Athearn website, and photos of previous run Chessie SD-50's, it appears that this time they may have corrected the sunshades. They showed black rubber gaskets around the doors, a nice touch, and the mail slot on mine is not printed, but I will grant you is relatively "shallow" in relief. Regarding the louvers on the cab, I didn't find enough photos of the earlier release to be able to tell. Perhaps I didn't look hard enough yet. Thank you all for the information. I will try to learn some more.
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Post by stottman on Mar 2, 2019 23:33:35 GMT -8
Huge waste of time, not to mention the sacrifice in privacy we offer them. Bingo. Not a week goes by without some news story involving Facebook and privacy. I'd rather miss out on the photos and information than let Zuckerberg into my life. Thats is why you do what allot of people do; Don't use your real name or give it info. I have lots of "real life" friends that use a play on their first name to meet the "first and last name" requirement, and lots of "online" friends that don't use anything close to their real name. |
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Post by fr8kar on Mar 3, 2019 0:33:09 GMT -8
Bingo. Not a week goes by without some news story involving Facebook and privacy. I'd rather miss out on the photos and information than let Zuckerberg into my life. Thats is why you do what allot of people do; Don't use your real name or give it info. I have lots of "real life" friends that use a play on their first name to meet the "first and last name" requirement, and lots of "online" friends that don't use anything close to their real name. Yep. Did that. In 2016 I created an email address at gmx.com, that is not in any way associated with any information connected to another account. In other words no phone number or email address was provided for backup. I used the pseudonym he6agon in order to create a Facebook account of the same name so I'd have an online presence for my 3D printing efforts. I had never been on Facebook prior to this point and to my knowledge neither my home email account nor the Gmail account I use for work had ever been used on Facebook. A couple days later I opened up the newly created he6agon Facebook page on my phone and within a few minutes Facebook notified me that all of my contact information was being uploaded. My phone is synced to my Gmail account, not the gmx.com account, so I don't understand how it could be confused that I had provided consent for this to occur. I watched in horror as my stored phone numbers, email addresses, notes, mailing addresses, etc. were being uploaded while I stood in the mall waiting for my wife to try on shoes. I immediately deleted Facebook from my phone and contacted Facebook to delete my account. I have not been back and I will not return. Again, it may be fine for some people but I will never use it again regardless of the benefit. YMMV. |
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Post by bnsf971 on Mar 3, 2019 5:14:24 GMT -8
Thats is why you do what allot of people do; Don't use your real name or give it info. I have lots of "real life" friends that use a play on their first name to meet the "first and last name" requirement, and lots of "online" friends that don't use anything close to their real name. Yep. Did that. In 2016 I created an email address at gmx.com, that is not in any way associated with any information connected to another account. In other words no phone number or email address was provided for backup. I used the pseudonym he6agon in order to create a Facebook account of the same name so I'd have an online presence for my 3D printing efforts. I had never been on Facebook prior to this point and to my knowledge neither my home email account nor the Gmail account I use for work had ever been used on Facebook. A couple days later I opened up the newly created he6agon Facebook page on my phone and within a few minutes Facebook notified me that all of my contact information was being uploaded. My phone is synced to my Gmail account, not the gmx.com account, so I don't understand how it could be confused that I had provided consent for this to occur. I watched in horror as my stored phone numbers, email addresses, notes, mailing addresses, etc. were being uploaded while I stood in the mall waiting for my wife to try on shoes. I immediately deleted Facebook from my phone and contacted Facebook to delete my account. I have not been back and I will not return. Again, it may be fine for some people but I will never use it again regardless of the benefit. YMMV. Your experience is why I will never use the FB for mobile app. I've heard way too many similar horror stories, where you have to give FB "keys to the kingdom", or else you can't use it. Like you, I don't use my real name there, and provided the bare minimum of info to get an account established. I also use several containment and control programs to keep FB at bay. |
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Post by Christian on Mar 3, 2019 5:52:09 GMT -8
not to mention Facebook's far superior interface when it comes to sharing photos or getting prompt responses about something. groups.io beats the whee out of FB for photos. It's a simple drag and drop using the online interface. As well as drag and drop with most, not all, email clients. Turn around time is a factor of your internet provider, computer and email client. My turn around is seconds. And there is no visual clutter. Privacy. Most of us can't beat the system. A cute name and blank profile means nothing until you control your computer ip address, your router address, your modem address, your internet provider address, and your national origin.* If you are posting or even just looking in this forum your information is available to those advertisers you see at the top. As I'm typing this, Bonefish Grill is collecting my statistics. If I were to click on the ad I'd be taken to my local Bonefish Grills website. If you use ad blocking software all the information is still available to those advertising servers; you've just blocked ProBoards income from those invisible ads. * Epic Privacy Browser does block all that. When I use epic for looking at something suspicious all my information appears to come from the Netherlands or France or where ever I choose. A lot of common web sites block that approach. Since epic retains nothing from a session you do have to set your preferences any time you use it. No stored bookmarks. I use a folder of URL's that I can quickly drag into epic. Or simply go with epic's defaults. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 3, 2019 9:44:10 GMT -8
Christian--
Thanks very much for the tip. I'll check it out!
I have more than one private email address, and I keep the newest/best account only for very important (to me) communications, and it actually gets zero spam, as a result.
Ebay and others are constantly trying to get me to confirm my cell phone number for "security reasons". I of course fail to understand how it helps my personal security if they know my phone number, so I refuse and just click that I'll provide it "later", which I have no intention of doing ever.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 3, 2019 9:54:54 GMT -8
Well, looking at the Athearn website, and photos of previous run Chessie SD-50's, it appears that this time they may have corrected the sunshades. They showed black rubber gaskets around the doors, a nice touch, and the mail slot on mine is not printed, but I will grant you is relatively "shallow" in relief. Regarding the louvers on the cab, I didn't find enough photos of the earlier release to be able to tell. Perhaps I didn't look hard enough yet. Thank you all for the information. I will try to learn some more. I may be wrong...but I don't think the SD50's had the louvers on the engineer's side of the cab? Those were mostly found on earlier "dash two" units...I don't recall them on later dash twos and 50 series units...personally. I am not a Chessie System expert, either...just speaking from general knowledge. |
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Post by grahamline on Mar 3, 2019 10:13:20 GMT -8
Remember the "Athearn lays off people" news at the top of this thread?
What jobs did these people have? Were they full-time? What was their contribution?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 3, 2019 10:37:35 GMT -8
Craig Walker: Product Development
Sylvia Hopkin: Parts Department/Warranty (I think)
Joe DElia: Not sure...but probably product development. He also owns Arrow Hobby/Proto Power West/A-line
Hope all goes well for these folks in their future endeavors. I don't know them personally, but I have had good interactions with them throughout the years. Sorry for their predicament.
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Post by csx3305 on Mar 3, 2019 11:04:13 GMT -8
I think Craig Walker was formerly of Microscale prior to working for Athearn.
The parts/warranty person being laid off is the biggest possible red flag here.
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Post by csx3305 on Mar 3, 2019 11:11:57 GMT -8
From CSX3305 "Then there's the ol' chestnuts like this one. I'll narrow it down for ya, it ain't the cab, but it is a glaring error and it is locationally close to the cab: www.athearn.com/Products/Default.aspx?ProdID=ATH80423Ouch, that hurts, that shouldn't be an issue with that model. Do the other road numbers from this run have the same issue, or is this a one-off issue? Russ I have an #8574 from the same run and it has the error too. However disappointing that may be, it is still better than the chartreuse-like lemon yellow of the first batch of YN2 SD50's. Got one of those too, picked up for cheap before the above linked batch was announced. It will be going to ebay soon. |
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Post by carrman on Mar 3, 2019 11:12:38 GMT -8
I think Craig Walker was formerly of Microscale prior to working for Athearn. The parts/warranty person being laid off is the biggest possible red flag here. Honestly? I think Athearn is being bundled up for sale. Just my opinion. Dave |
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Post by The Ferro Kid on Mar 3, 2019 11:23:40 GMT -8
I think Craig Walker was formerly of Microscale prior to working for Athearn. The parts/warranty person being laid off is the biggest possible red flag here. Honestly? I think Athearn is being bundled up for sale. Just my opinion. Dave Interesting observation! If so, hopefully not to Atlas or Walthers -- they have too much to manage already. |
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Post by csx3305 on Mar 3, 2019 11:27:15 GMT -8
Regarding the louvers on the cab, I didn't find enough photos of the earlier release to be able to tell. Perhaps I didn't look hard enough yet. Thank you all for the information. I will try to learn some more. I own the following: 8636 (Chessie, first run, 2003) 8603 (SBD, first run, 2003) 8637 (CSX YN2, first run, 2003) 8577 (CSX Two Tone, first run, 2003) 8574 (CSX YN2, fourth run, 2013) They all lack the cab louvers, just as they should. Not conjecture, not speculation..... fact. They are sitting in an IKEA glass display case five feet away from me as I type this. It is a relatively small error, not much surface area involved, but I can see how somebody would be irritated by its presence on a predominately yellow unit. Pretty difficult to putty out the louvers and match the yellow without a total respray. A bigger issue to me, personally, is that the pilot plates are accurate only for (ex-SBD/ex-Chessie) CSX units numbering higher than 8602. Unless they quietly tooled a new sill since the Scaletrains exodus. |
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