This review is on Bachmann’s newest version of the F40PH.[:)]
The new Spectrum F40 is a huge improvement over the old one. It uses an all new shell and chassis that are good enough to make it’s price seem inexpensive. It has see-through roof vents with seperate fan blades inside. it also has flush fitting windows and seperate windshield wipers. The cab interior is all black, except for the crew, and can hardly be seen. I painted my interior a lighter brown with gray for the floor and seats. It also comes with optional wind deflectors for the sides of the cab, but they are over-sized and delecate. I broke both of mine.[:I] All the grab irons are shiny polished steel, or some other silvery metal. The rear deck has safety tread molded on, and it looks very good. The pilots have seperate MU hoses and coupler lift bars, but the lift bars are upside down. The coupler boxes hold the shell to the chassis, but they are also put in upside down. They can be fixed by prying them open, flipping the coupler over, putting them back together, slipping them back through and screwing them into the chassis. The fuel tank is very detailed with seperate detail parts and a pipe going to all the parts on the left side. It also comes off very easily, but it can be screwed into a couple holes coming from the motor retainer through the bottom of the engine with 2/56 screws.
The grills on the sides of the engine are all black, but I painted the bottom halfs of mine silver to match a picture of a real F40 in the Amtrak Phase II paint. The paint on the
Glad to see that Bachmann wasn’t sleeping while Kato was designing their F40!
BTW: For anyone that wishes to install sound in an F40, the correct horn sound would be the Nathan K5LA (available from Soundtraxx…). The P5 horn would also be correct, but not available. Modelers using LokSound or Digitrax sound decoders would have to download the P5 from horn club sound files.
There’s just one thing I forgot:
It comes with E-Z Mate Mark II couplers installed. It also has optional extended length E-Z Mate Mark IIs, but you don’t really need them unless the passenger car’s couplers are too far inside.[:)]
Did Bachmann finally figure out how to install grab irons without them being flush against the carbody? I have an older pair of Amtrak F40s, and to me, the grabs look a bit odd like that.
emdgp92, they’re still pretty much flush with the shell, but they are straight. Some older Bachmann Spectrum diesels had the grab irons mounted crooked, but they managed to fix that recently.[:)]
mustanggt, I don’t believe the shell is too low on this one. It never scrapes across the track like my older 8-40CW does sometimes.[:)]
