Show us your best F units


railfan said:
What a great stash of extra B&O F-units you've got there! My own style is to have as many multiples of all good things as possible. One or two is never enough. ... ... :)
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Thanks. The 5 foreground A-units in the photo are 'pure' B&O (4500-series); the one partially hidden in the background is a former C&O unit repainted for B&O (7000-series).

As my signature text [and avatar] indicates, I want to return to B&O modeling of the 1970s era. The quest is taking a bit longer than originally planned due to financial setbacks (plus some of my own stupid decisions:eek:), but I'm gradually getting closer to my goal. I can't sell off any of my CSX stuff yet because I still need it for op sessions.
 
zoegraf said:
Very nice model and I'm especially impressed by the factory paint.
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The factory paint has gotton better over the years. Here are a few closeup shots of my CDOT FL9.

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Wow your CDOT FL9 looks amazing!! Thats my favorite loco and road number! I need to find one of these, but until then I'm just going to drool over your pics.
MGWSY said:
The factory paint has gotton better over the years. Here are a few closeup shots of my CDOT FL9.
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I never heard of the FL9 until I saw this. I googled it and found some pictures and history on it. Kind of looks like a Fairbanks Morse C-liner with the mix of 4 and 6 wheel trucks.




Mike
 
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Fresh from today's mail here are two Intermountain FT Northern Pacific sets combined to make a complete ABBA set. Haven't had time to do the decoder installs yet so don't know how they perform, but they feel a little bit heavier than my Kato F7s so I'm expecting good things.
 
While going through old posts checking for broken images, I found this.

montanan said:
I'll have to get a better picture of this. This unit was done about 20 years ago because I couldn't find any accurate F-7s at the time. It has been repowered with a can motor and constant lighting installed. Started as an Athearn unit.
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I did a double take, as at a glance it looks a lot like this photo of mine, right down to the station color.
Mt Rainier Railroad at Elbe, WA

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Here's a few photos of 7012A that I took in the yard in Livingston I am guessing sometime in the early 80's? Marvin Varnes was a friend of mine, hand the shop supervisor for the BN. When ever he had something interesting, he would give me a call. It had just finished restoration and was going to be leaving later that day. Not the best photos. They were scanned from prints.

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It had the simplified NP freight scheme paint job. This locomotive was also used in the movie Runaway Train.

The photo you posted shows that the locomotive could use a little it of love, and paint.
 
Here are a few more F units. For the longest time I have been wanting to have a North Coast Limited. I had picked up an Athearn Genisis F-7 about 10 years ago, but hadn't been able to find a B unit or another A unit. I had been collecting some Walthers NCL passenger cars and a couple from other manufacturers and stumbled onto a Stewart F3A and a B unit. The Stewart A uit ran at almost the exact same speed as the Athearn unit, but came with no road numbers and both the dark and light green were totally wrong. Some surgery and details also needed to be added. The twin horns were removed and the holes for them filled in. A winterization hatch was also added. On the NCL, the stainless steel upper grills were painted the body color also. A total repaint was in order.

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The same paint work had to be done to the B unit plus steam generator details added to it.

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Decals and handrails were installed and I finally got my A-B-A consist. The repainted Stewart A unit was numbered 6502A.

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Here it is dropping downgrade with what passenger cars I could find.

 
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Nice photos! That was very early in the 80's, I'm going to guess 1982, but I could be off a year or two. They did an amazing job of restoring her, she was like brand new when we got her. The engine room was the cleanest I've ever seen. They really went through it and made everything right.

She was indeed used in "Runaway Train", or at least parts of it. Most of the movie was filmed in Alaska, but we did some filming on the BA&P in Anaconda. Most notably all the shop and yard scenes early in the movie, as well as a few of the scenes out of the mainline. We even filmed the scene where the brake shoes fly off and land in the snow sizzling and melting the snow. They heated them red hot with a torch and tossed them in a snow bank while all the shop guys laughed. Not sure if that scene actually made the final cut, been a while since I watched the movie. I was one of the "train wranglers" on the movie, accompanying 7012 to and from the shoot, as well as spending about a month in Montana shooting.

We had some real adventures on that movie. It wasn't as snowy as they hoped it would be, even though it was winter (February or March, can't recall?) We ended up buying all the Christmas Tree flock they could find, and spraying all the cars in the yard with it. We added "snow" with runway foam sprayed by a tank truck. Then when they were filming, we used leaf blowers and Styrofoam balls like you use in beanbag chairs to make a snowstorm. For days everyone on the crew was finding those little spheres stuck to them. My hotel room had tiny drifts of them each night. :)
 
As for being cared for, NP 7012A is living a good life. She does need a new paint job, no argument there, and hopefully that will happen in the not too distant future. But she's mechanically sound, well cared for and maintained by the crew of the Mt Rainier Railroad. She performed great on the Polar Express last winter, and they keep her in good operating condition, while also not putting a lot of miles on her, so it's a nice balance of keeping the engine running while also not wearing it out with constant service. Pretty much the best you could hope for in preservation.
 
Here's another F unit. I gave a low ball bid of $25 for this on ebay, a weathered FP-7. I looked at it and wondered where they got the number for it. Northern Pacific passenger locomotives were numbered in the 6500 or 6700 number range, plus the Northern Pacific only had two FP-7's, number 6600 and 6601.

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Also, a snow plow on the pilot. Something wrong with this picture.

After a whole lot of searching around, the locomotive is correct, right down to the plow on the pilot. Must have been after the BN merger as there is a Great Northern locomotive behind it.

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This one will be up for sale tomorrow at the swap meet.
 
bob said:
As for being cared for, NP 7012A is living a good life. She does need a new paint job, no argument there, and hopefully that will happen in the not too distant future. But she's mechanically sound, well cared for and maintained by the crew of the Mt Rainier Railroad. She performed great on the Polar Express last winter, and they keep her in good operating condition, while also not putting a lot of miles on her, so it's a nice balance of keeping the engine running while also not wearing it out with constant service. Pretty much the best you could hope for in preservation.
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I have seen quite a few videos of her in action. Sounds good despite the worn paint. I am hoping to get out there some time and take a ride behind it.
 
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