Athearn DD35A

[EngineDriver]

Hi everyone, I don't know if this will interest anyone but here goes.

About 25yrs ago I bought an Athearn DD35A (it's advertised as a DD40 but as far as I can find out it isn't) anyway, it was secondhand and cost £20, but from the get go it was a royal pain in the bum. It is the two motor version and it would never start away smoothly due to the fact that one motor would always start to turn before the other. It would de-rail on anything but the smoothest track and it just hated points. So after some initial messing about I just left it stabled up and never used it. Eventually it was removed from the layout altogether and put away in the cupboard, from there it migrated to a box in the loft and lay forgotten until a house move in the mid 90's. It was looked at again at about this time but it had not healed up and got better so it was again put away and all but forgotten. Then about 5 or 6yrs ago I was looking for something in the loft and "found" the loco all over again, somehow though it had suffered some damage, but nothing too serious, so I decided that this was it's last chance and as we were now out in the garden that it would look great going round out in the fresh air. So I took it down to the workshop and made a start.....................................

The first thing I decided to address was to get it to start off smoothly, this turned out to be quite an easy fix, as soon as I had found a U J from a radio controlled model boat prop shaft which just happened to be the exact size of the protruding armature shaft of the Athearn motors.

[traingeekboy]

My initial first impression is ugh UP Blech. I just can't stomach the yellow beasts.

But it is an interesting project.

Removing a driver is interesting. My first instinct would have been to check all the wheel gauges, but I expect you did that.

[EngineDriver]

You take some pleasing don't you Griff? You don't like BLACK, and now you don't like YELLOW either.

As to the loco, yes I did check the back to back measurements, but as I said in the article, it was only when I noticed the front of the bogie lift slightly when the loco started off I got a clue as to what was wrong, and the only way to get the front axle to drop back onto the rail was to remove the drive gear. I suppose there may have been other ways to fix the problem but removing the gear was the easiest.

[aussietmrail]

Hi Nige, that Athearn DD40 looks familiar, here is a pic of mine same running number, did notice you have both motors connected, why is that, mine isn't and runs well.

Here is that pic looking down the loco of my DD35/b loco, you can notice the lean on the loco to the right, will reset the gear cap that holds the trucks in place, the motors aren't the originals either, had to do som sorting out so the loco will run with others, will mainly double head with the DD40 running number 70 and plan to buy a GP35 to triple head.

The last pic is of my latest Bachman centennial DD40AX 6900, my first loco with DCC on board and the Big boy is a Revel 87 scale kit, I plan to model a diorama of the famous Union Pacific Kennefick park in Nebraska USA, would love a working big boy model.

Tony.

[EngineDriver]

Hi Tony, my Athearn model did not have any flywheels fitted when I got it. I don't know how old it is but I bought it about 28yrs ago. As I said in the article it never did run very well. Starting off was one of the issues with one end trying to start away before the other. So my way round that was to tie them together with a universal joint, it also ensures that they both always run at the same speed as each other.

I thought the Big boy in the picture was a Rivarossi model, looks great though you have made a good job of it.

We have quite a few steam loco's although we can't really run them during a normal running session as we try to stick to loco's that were around in the late sixty's early seventies 'ish give or take. My son likes to run the steamers on specials and thats how we get round having them out and about.