Athearn Bay Window Caboose
Athearn
Bay Window Caboose...
Athearn makes a bay window caboose that you should
avoid
if you are looking for an accurate Chessie model right out of the
box.
The Athearn model is based on a Southern Pacific railroad prototype,
not Chessie. The Chessie System rostered hundreds of these large
bay window cabooses in classes C-24, C-26, C-26A, C-27 and C-27A.
The photos below are of the oldest of the large bay windows, the
C-24. The introduction of the Chessie System Historical Society
C-26 has finally made prototypically correct large bay window cabooses
available.
The large windows on the sides are in the wrong places. Below are
two Dean Heacock pics that demonstrate the proper window placement on
B&O C-24 class cabooses (bay
windows). Please feel free to buy the Athearn kit if you like
them.
I have three Athearn bay window models, one is actually a Bev-Bel
products
from an Athearn kit that is in work. The other two both came with
safety schemes in the Athearn "Chessie Safety Caboose" limited edition
set, and I didn't want to strip them and ruin the nice factory applied
paint job. They make good stand in cabooses for now, until I get
better ones. Expect to pay $4-5 for an undecorated kit and $5-6
for
a decorated one. Don't pay more than that. Train shows and
swap meets have tons of these kits. They are very easy to come by.
Below are my two cabeese from the Athearn limited
edition
set. Notice one is from each side, and neither matches the window
placement on the real pics above. To correct the problem you
would
need to take the extra window on the right of the yellow caboose below
and bring it around and place it in the middle of the other two (where
the cat logo is on the blue caboose below). The window on the end
are also different. Look at more pics on Dean's site to get a
good plan of what needs to be
done. Also some bay windows came with roof walks, others did
not. The C-24 class (in the 30XX series) all did. Other bay
window cabooses like C-26-27A (in the 37XX series and higher) did
not. Make sure you get a pic before you decide to put yours on or
not.
B&O bay window roofs rusted like crazy, so make sure yours is a
dark
rust color. The bottom of the sill needs to be removed too and
replaced
with a straight piece. I just painted the bottom grey to try and
give it a more prototypical appearance (see pics above for what the
piece
should look like). Fixing this too would have caused damage to
the
factory yellow or blue paint.
