Athearn News 3/10/2007

[John]

Athearn News
Greetings!    March 10, 2007

We have a few quick announcements today.

MP15AC
To give you a quick update, here are some photos of a pilot model. http://www.athearn.com/Newsletter/031007/MP15AC-Update.pdf As you can see, we are making progress. This locomotive runs great, and we are excited about the way it is coming together. We don't have a firm ETA yet, because there is still a lot of work to do. Remember, it's a pilot model, and changes will be made before production.

N Challenger
The N Challengers are in stores, and by all accounts are a big hit with modelers. They are selling at a brisk rate, and we have shipped all that were made in the first production run. We'll be making more (later this year, no firm date yet), but if you want these road numbers we suggest that you act now.

HO Big Boy
The second run of HO Big Boys are in stores now. Check them out!

Instructions and Warranty Cards
We have posted the N Challenger and HO Big Boy instruction books and warranty cards on our web site. Go to the listing of the specific locomotive and you'll see a link to click.

HO Blue Box Kit Production Schedule
We have posted the new kit production schedule for the next few months. Check it out to see which kits will be made during 2007 (there are a lot of them, and many haven't been made for a long time).

Upcoming Events

Stop by and say hi— we’ll be at the following show(s):

March 17-18
Worlds Greatest Hobby On Tour
Fort Worth, TX

That's it for today. We'll have some exciting new product announcements next week, so be sure to watch for an Athearn News late next week.

The Folks at Athearn

[tom mann]

wow...that HO scale MP15AC is awesome.

[John]

Yea .. Makes me want to convert the layout to HO

[wm3798]

If you convert that **&%^%(* Layout one more time, I'm gonna brain ya! >

Lee

[3rdrail]

Remind me to never click on one of those Athearn PDF's again.  > >  After about 3 minutes, it still hadn't loaded and then did not want to be closed. 

[Nelson]

Remind me to never click on one of those Athearn PDF's again.  > >  After about 3 minutes, it still hadn't loaded and then did not want to be closed. 

Well, you know how when the waitress says "that plate is hot, don't touch it" and you just have to touch it to see.
So I just had to try the pdf, and sure enough I had the same problem. Had to re-boot to get rid of it.

[160pennsy]

Remind me to never click on one of those Athearn PDF's again.  > >  After about 3 minutes, it still hadn't loaded and then did not want to be closed. 

Well, you know how when the waitress says "that plate is hot, don't touch it" and you just have to touch it to see.
So I just had to try the pdf, and sure enough I had the same problem. Had to re-boot to get rid of it.

Shop around for broadband and get off that legacy dial-up....the Athearn pdf file size = 2.13 MB (2,236,411 bytes)...It has a few large detailed photos and it loads fine thru Verizon FiOS.

[Nelson]

Shop around for broadband and get off that legacy dial-up....the Athearn pdf file size = 2.13 MB (2,236,411 bytes)...It has a few large detailed photos and it loads fine thru Verizon FiOS.

Well shop around for facts before you jump to conclusions. I'm on DSL not dial-up, and I haven't had that problem with any other large pdf files, just the Athearn site.

[tom mann]

viewing pdf files using acrobat through the browser (on a windows machine) sucks. 

[3rdrail]

Shop around for broadband and get off that legacy dial-up....the Athearn pdf file size = 2.13 MB (2,236,411 bytes)...It has a few large detailed photos and it loads fine thru Verizon FiOS.

Easier said than done, you have two choices around here, the local phone company or the local cable company, and it's all or nothing. If you get broadband with the cable co., you have to get telephone service with them at about three times what the phone company charges. If I get lousy service from the phone company on dialup, what makes you think they'd be any better on DSL? Then they want you to take DirectTV too.  >

[railspike55]

I had same issues, and use Adob ver 6.
Mine just sat there for a long time.

Right clicked the file and choose save to disk
after downloading is done. then open the file.

It worked that time.

Ron N.

[Mark5]

say, you should edit all the HO crap out of this forum. What would we be left with? 

[TiVoPrince]

I may have to
reconsider a HO switching layout...

[tokenbrit]

I had same issues, and use Adob ver 6.
Mine just sat there for a long time.

Right clicked the file and choose save to disk
after downloading is done. then open the file.

It worked that time.

Ron N.

[OT]
Works fine viewing pdf files using acrobat through the browser for me - I upgraded to Adobe ver 8 a while back.

Ver 6 & 7 were a bit clunky & the problem may be the Adobe Upgrade Manager trying to work out what upgrades to suggest rather than the file itself, or the Athearn site... would explain why downloading & opening from disk works.

Might also explain why it locks up some computer - I chose to kill the Upgrade Manager when I went to ver 8.
[/OT]

Agreed the MP15 in HO looks mighty fine, but I'm waiting for the N-Scale Big Boy announcement from Athearn (& a Cab Forward in N from IM)

[up1950s]

say, you should edit all the HO crap out of this forum. What would we be left with? 

Perhaps , but whats being done in HO is important to N scale as there is then hope for us . I feel pretty confident N scale will see a MP15AC from some company starting with the letter A within the next 24 months . Can't see why they wouldn't do it .