John-NYBW
I fabricated a drawbar to connect them because of the poor coupler box Athearn had on their BB diesels. No way to get them to couple anywhere close to a reasonable distance apart using couplers.
My first HO scale diesels were an early A-B-B-A set from Athearn, painted and lettered in the Santa Fe "war bonnet" scheme. As best as I can recall, this was in 1956.
One A-unit was powered by a single motor, mounted directly on the lead truck. All four units were equipped with early all-metal Kadee couplers, like these...
...and the A-units had rubber diaphragms (with interlocking metal faceplates) on their rear and similar diaphragms on both ends of both B-units.
I eventually repainted them in my own two-tone grey & green paint scheme and they were later sold...
I also had a couple of steam locos, one a all-metal Tyco 0-6-0 tank engine and a John English Pacific...still have both of them, and am up-grading the Pacific.
Here's the re-worked Pacific with a scratchbuilt tender...
...but it's due for some upgrading soon.
Some years later, I bought some affordable RS-11 diesels, that turned-out to have very poor motors and extremely over-size handrails....I removed the motors and replaced the fat hard-plastic handrails with piano wire and Athearn metal handrail stanchions...
Then paired them-up with two similar-looking Atlas diesels...
All of the dummies (except me, of course) are long-gone, useful for looking decent, but not all that great for pulling a train.
Wayne
