Athearn has some new parts coming out early next year that will be of interest to modelers. On the locomotive side, Athearn is releasing two kits to upgrade older release SD40 & SD45 Ready To Roll locomotives to be DCC & Sound Ready units with Genesis motors for improved performance.

On the Freight car side, Athearn is releasing new HO Scale Genesis power pickup trucks in both 33 in and 36 in wheel versions. This will make it easy to upgrade existing rolling stock with LED lighting and/or Sound. One complaint regarding the recently released SoundTraxx SoundCar decoder was that you still had to get power to it. These kits make it easy.

Expected Release: February 2015

JMP