Athearn Roundhouse 40-Foot High Cube

I was intrigued by Athearn's re-release of its outside-post 40-foot high cube under the Roundhouse brand, whose tooling I think is originally from the 1960s. I think they did a run of these cars in the blue Golden West Service scheme some years ago, but the new release includes a heavily patched version lettered for the Arizona Eastern Railway, which is the successor to short lines that have operated former Southern Pacific branches in Arizona and New Mexico since the late 1980s. The prototypes are still in service and carry refined copper products.

True to their 1960s heritage, the models are "close enough" representations. The sorta prototypes are three series of cars built for the Southern Pacific. Some were refurbished, painted blue for Golden West Service and leased to short lines, while the SP retained others. The Golden West cars came off lease and were patched SP after the SP-UP merger, but are still a faded Golden West blue. The SP cars, still red, have been heavily patched and relettered AZER.

The new Roundhouse weathered and patched paint versions are pretty attractive. Below is mine right from the box:

Below is the car's underframe out of the box. The new regime paints the underframe pieces, which never happened in the bluebox days.

Athearn has steadily been phasing out the old bluebox-style underframes, which date from the late 1950s. This car, with its vintage tooling, is one that retains this underframe, which I always rework. Its main problem is that the coupler boxes rely on a metal clip to hold the coupler in place, which is a loosey-goosey arrangement that can fall off. It also makes it nearly impossible to adjust the coupler's play. My solution is to remove the weight (this new version holds it in place with contact cement, but you can pry it loose with a flathead screwdriver).

Then I clip off the coupler boxes, and I toss both the boxes with their metal clips and the brittle plastic stock McHenry couplers. I replace these with Kadee 148s. I glue the 148 boxes to the underframe as shown and drill out mounting holes #50. I glue the weight to the top of the floor with silicone glue. In this case, I had to drill the truck mounting screw holes through, also #50, and replaced the truck mounting screws with 3/8" 2-56. I used the old truck mounting screws to mount the Kadee 148 boxes.

I painted the underframe, trucks, and wheels with Scalecoat Flat Grime #2 from a spray can. I cleaned the wheel treads with acetone using a cotton swab.

I srill need to add weight up to NMRA standards. The cheapest way to do it is with pennies stuck into a layer of silicon glue.

These cars see less tagging than usual, but they do need post-2010 FRA conspicuity stripes. I still have to add these as well.