Old Athearn spring drives

I would like to have more information on this also.  I have some of the rubber band drives and I would like to see how they did that.

Gene Anstine

Interesting.  A pair of RDC's I purchased new back in the late 1980's still used rubberbands.

Rusty

I would like to know also.

I wonder if the spring drive replacements are similar to the ones used on the German live steam "machine shop" toys.

Pete.

Do the Athearn units have a pulley on the end of the shafts ? I can’t see how a spring would work on a standard Athearn drive.

I bought this Lindberg unit a few weeks ago and it was never opened but my curiosity got the better of me. The unit has a loop helical spring drive but it has a pulley on the end of the shaft...there was also a extra spring in the box.

Im guessing here...but I feel that if you don’t have a pulley on the shafts the spring would just sit on the spinning shaft...but a elastic band is somewhat “sticky” so it turns the axles .

heres some pictures 

Here’s the pulley I’m speaking of on the end of a jack shaft in my service kit 

The Athearn F-7 from my childhood didn't have any pulleys.  The rubber band ran on the shaft and on one axle. You had to take the truck apart to put the rubber band on each axle. The shafts were attached to each end of the motor with rubber sleeves. The rubber bands (Athearn called them drive bands?) held the trucks on the body (or maybe there were some more rubber  couplings holding the trucks on.

One "drive band" per axle

In Minneapolis in the 50's a rubber band was called a "binder" and these Athearn units were so fast that we called them "binder bombs."

Anyway, the rubber bands and couplings were common hardware items then, but what modern materials can be used for replacements?

Don't know about the drive springs, but by 1958, Lionel was using Neoprene O rings.

Image scanned from a Lionel 1958 catalog in my possession:

Rusty

All, this afternoon, I will take a photo of a unit with the spring drive and of one with rubber bands so you can see how they were configured.  But no sources yet for the springs?

I had no idea that Lindberg made HO locos.Italian import supplier?

@philo426 posted:

I had no idea that Lindberg made HO locos.Italian import supplier?

Nope.  Made in Skokie, Illinois USA.

Rusty

Cool they made slot cars too! 

I never saw an Athearn spring drive, only their Hi-f drive which used rubber bands, and were produced starting in the mid-fifties, and used on the Hustler, RDC, F-units, GP9’s, and Rectifier Electrics (rare), The Geeps and F-unit drives were re-engineered with geared drives (first with no flywheels and zinc sideframes, then with diecast flywheels and sideframes, and finally with brass flywheels and plastic sideframes. When the rubber bands were still in current production, an imported (Japanese) geared drive was available to fit Athearn  geep and F-unit shells, which was also used on some early brass locos. This drive featured three piece die-cast truck frames (which were held together with screws). As I recall they may have been called “Olympic” or “Olympian”. They ran ok but had no flywheels. I look forward to seeing photos of the Athearn spring drives.

Bill in FtL

I am not familiar with Athearn producing a spring drive, just the hi-fi drive that others have discussed.  I have several 1960's F7s and a GP9 or two that had those drives as well a an RDC I purchased new in high school in the 80's that still used that system.  They were kind of  a 0-200 smph in 3 seconds drive system, but my RDC ran away with the HO trains races at the Allentown meet as a teen: 

As an aside, Lindberg produced some of the early drives for Varney in the V2 and V4 motors.  I believe they were 6v and 12v respectively, but I'm going from memory.  Varney did use a spring drive in their F3s and NW2s starting in 1946 until sometime in the 50's.  In those drives the motor was mounted on top of the power truck and the pulleys were stacked as well.

However Peter, I am very curious to see the comparison photos.  Mehano in the 80's who did locomotives under their own brand as well as the late AHM, and early IHC brands had a spring drive mechanism that was unlike anything I've seen elsewhere.

Unfortunately all my examples are buried in storage at the moment.

EDITED:  Here is a link that references the Athearn Pulley drive.  It wasn't actually produced by Athearn - they outsourced it.  Who would have thought?

http://hotraincollector.com/th...nic-athearn-hustler/

Here are the photos I told you about.  First a spring drive, then the old rubber band drive.  What I would like to do is the springs are available it so slide a piece of rubber over the shaft for traction and then replace the rubber band with a spring.  If I can find the spring source, that is.a 

@PeterA posted:

Here are the photos I told you about.  First a spring drive, then the old rubber band drive.  What I would like to do is the springs are available it so slide a piece of rubber over the shaft for traction and then replace the rubber band with a spring.  If I can find the spring source, that is.a 

That seems to match the Lionel illustration from my earlier posting with the exception of a spring vs. an O-ring.  You may have better luck searching for an O-ring instead of a spring.

I'm guessing Lionel developed their own drive while still buying shells from Athearn.

Rusty