I just bought an Athearn Dash 9-44cw Norfolk Southern locomotive(HO scale). I was working on it and noticed something weird. The head lights are not above the windsheild in the horizontal arangement. They are below the windsheild in a vertical arangement. I looked at many pictures of the real NS Dash 9-44cw, and not a one had the same head lights, they had horizontal headlights above the windsheild. I thought Atheran was pretty good at following the prototype of each railroad. I guess they let one slip by.
Anyone have Athearn's Dash9-44cw Norfolk Southern?
- Thread starter Nick8564
- Start date
Was it an old Blue Box, or the newer R-T-R. I think the newer R-T-R's are right for the prototype represented. The older BB's are pretty much generic shells.
NS does have what is refered to as "frog eye's" on some of those locomotives. They are horizontal but on top like every other locomotive. Now if they are below the windshield then that's a different story. Look around you can find pictures of them set up like that. We see them from time to time.
Athearn drop the ball on the NS Dash 9-44cw and ended up with the wrong headlight location for NS units. 
I am sure Athearn is aware of the problem...I doubt if they will fix the problem since they would need to do a new set of dies just for the NS units.Its terrible Athearn didn't do the research...After all its a great looking locomotive other wise.
Its fixable but,would require body putty,sanding and more then likely new paint and decal job..
Its fixable but,would require body putty,sanding and more then likely new paint and decal job..
Chances are more prototype locomotives have the low vertical arrangement than the upper horizontal one, and its cheaper to make a generic model for everything. I'm sure you can buy a cab kit frome somewhere to get the correct cab, but like brakie said, i doubt they'd make a new mold for a shell with the correct headlight arrangment if its only one or 2 prototypes as opposed to 5 ot 6 of the current arrangement.
NS doesn't actually have any C44-9Ws. They have more than 1000 C40-9Ws, a type no other railroad has. They look similar to C44-9Ws, but their headlights are different.
green_elite_cab is 100% correctgreen_elite_cab said:
. heres my take on it, with the blue box engines, Athearn would put road names on engines that some roads NEVER HAD. why?, because some people wouldn't know if it was correct, or they just didn't care, "hey, that engine is the road i model", and would buy it anywaystooth1. NOW, Athearn is getting ALOT more prototypical AND the detail is 1000% better too!:thumb:...but the cold reality is, its still all about $$$.
Triplex said:
Actually the NS C40-9Ws are externally the same as various C44-9Ws from other roads,except all of NS units have the headlights above the windshield..
Triplex said:
well there you go then! i didn't know that. learn somethign new everyday. Is the headlight the only external difference?
may you could detail it like a C40-9W.
Nick8564 said:
The problem with trying to replicate each prototypes differences in a plastic model is that the tooling is extremely expensive, whereas casting the parts is cheap. The result is that companies sometimes will paint a model for a railroad that didn't use that specific model if they had something close. When Athearn came out with the mikado, they did not originally offer it in Santa Fe bcause Santa Fe never had a usra light mikado. The Santa Fe did have a mikado that was similar to the usra version, but not identical. The demand was such that Athearn eventually painted their mikado for Santa Fe. For them to build tooling to replicate a locomotive specifically for NS only would add so much to the cost of the model, that there would be a very limited market.
My first idea was it could be a former Conrail unit, but Conrail units where also with high headlights and I guess they had not that much of this type. But what about getting a correct cab as spare part and mounting it on the loco? If you don't wanna do all the painting and detailling, you could do it as a kind of crash repaired cab in primer. I've seen a picture of a NS Dash 9 with a partly new painted nose.
Tobias
Tobias
In any event, if you want an NS ge unit, you can get an undecorated C40-8W in Conrail style from Atlas and paint it up.