I’ve seen a couple posts about permanently connecting F-units with drawbars. Are drawbars available for close coupling F units, or do they have to be made by the modeler? I’ve used the Kadee #43 short shank couplers on some F units, but they stil aren’t coupled close enough.
American Limited has close-coupling rigs for F-units - Athearn and Stewart, AFAIK, and maybe more. Or, if you really weant to use permanent drawbars (protoytpe FTs had them, but many were removed by the railroads) you can make your own out of styrene. Kemtron (now Precision Scale Co.) had drawbars of various sizes, as well. The gap between units should be 36", but remember this will limit the curve radius you can use…
Thanks for the info.
The Stewart close coupling kit is #450 and it gives correct scale distance. I"ve used them and they are nice. Athearn Genesis are scale distance out of the box. Athearn blue box need the American Limited kits as mentioned above. Don’t know about Intermountain or P2k.
I raised the same question last year and got a great piece of advice. You can easily make your own by cutting up an old credit card to the right length and width and drilling a hole in each end. You just need to determine how close you want your units to be coupled and go from there. These homemade drawbars can then be painted a basic black. This was one of the best pieces of advice I’ve got from this forum. They were easy to build and work great.
The question is, why draw bar F units. Pretty much only FT’s came drawbarred and that had to do partly with some silly engineer law. Rio Grande received some with and some without drawbars and all the remaining F’s (F3s F7s and F9s) all had couplers. Athearn blue box F’s are the only ones that I’m aware of that are a pain in the tush to get close coupled so those would be the only ones that would Wii motely qualify.
because there wasn’t a way to see out the back of one A, sets of Fs were treated as one engine on some roads, and didn’t need a coupler because they’d never be comikng apart. EX: an ABBA would be numbered 4449. the lead would be 4449A, followed by 4449B, 4449C, and 4449D. Those that served as smaller sets and on smaller roads, where the ABBA long haul might become an AA or ABA or AB to handle the local run before merging again to go home, the couplers were needed to pull apart.
Least, I think I have that right. I’ve threatrened to drawbar lots of engines and cars due to less than steller couplers.
That ‘Law’ or ‘Rule’ dates back to a 1937 union agreement. The basic rule was that each ‘cab’ unit needed an engineer/fireman, or the tonnage was reduced to the maximum for the most powerful engine in the consist(steam engines as well). There was a Western Railroad agreement as well that protected conductors/brakemen as well. With double headed engines, only one set of conductor/brakemen were used rather than 2 sets. Most of the times a ‘AA’ set of passenger locomotives for a specific train was allowed by the unions, and a single crew could be used. The C&NW & Milw E3/E6’s fell into this realm. The problem started when the C&NW split up ‘AA’ sets and single E6’s were assigned to smaller ‘400’ trains. The unions then stated getting interested in this as they knew diesel freight engines were around the corner.
Most early diesel sets were considered a single locomotive as they were assigned to specific passenger trains and were not broken up. With freight engines, there could be an issue. The EMD FT was usually delivered as an ‘AB’ set, and EMD even offered to ‘drawbar’ the 2 ‘AB’ sets together an no charge if needed. The Santa Fe had their FT’s delivered with couplers on all units, and when the unions started raising their concerns, Santa Fe instructed EMD to deliver the FT’s as ABBB sets. By 1943 the issue was resolved(the Fed’s used their heavy hand on the unions). I suspect impeding the ‘war effort’ was something the unions did not want to be accused of.
Anyway, the Santa Fe ‘FS’ kit for couplers on both ends of the FT’s was a popular upgrade done by many railroads(as well as seperate starter batteries and a hostler control in the booster).
Jim Bernier
If you plan to run your F’s in fixed sets and not add other units to them then drawbars are ok. Drawbars limit the flexibility of making up multiple unit lash ups too. In passenger service drawbared sets of power might be ok. I prefer the ability to change out units as needed without regard to whether the units have couplers or drawbars.
old dummy couplers from the scrap box done good for me on a set of shark nose units.
My Lackawanna F-3 AB set (both powered) came with knuckles installed, but had horn hooks and a draw bar in the package.
There was never any mention of that in Strapac’s book regarding Rio Grande’s draw barred FT’s. However, F units were generally ran as AB or ABBA sets and mixing/matching power units didn’t really get popular until the 1960’s on the D&RGW. However, some of Rio Grande’s FT’s were delivered with drawbars between the A and B unit, but after a few years, any such units were converted to automatic couplers. I couldn’t find any discussion of the union rules in that book so it must have been a magazine article relating it to the breaking up of power units and the draw bars. No F3’s, F7’s or F9’s were delivered to the Rio Grande with draw bars according to Strapac’s book.
Standard reply to coupler issues = KD’s 
Drawbars on F3 and later models is just silly. There are plenty of ways to get scale coupling between these units.
David B
[:-^]
An interesting side-bar to this is, we always talk about A-B-A and A-B-B-A sets in the lash-up. But the Western Pacific for their frieght trains prefered to run A-A-A units and ran them all face forward. I never have run across a reason for this. I only assume that they had fewer “B” units and they were tied up with the CZ. then in later years they were probably able to sell off the “B” units and kept the head-end "A"s and ran them together. This still does not explain why they ran them all facing forward. If anyone has the answer, would sure be glad to know.
Johnboy out…
Iposted this photo in another thread several days ago. It illustrates how the protoype did use drawbars instead of couplers on F units. For modeling, hoever, it’s more convenient to have couplers. (The photo is published in the CB&Q in Color series by M. Spoor.)
I honestly can’t remember ever seeing a photo of an AAA lashup all facing forward - so I didn’t get the impression that was the rule with WP. I have casually followed the WP because it was the freight connection to the Rio Grande in the 70’s and I had a college room mate in Sacramento who worked for the WP and his father and grandfather also worked for the WP. WP had B units like any other RR and from what I can tell used ABA or ABBA lashups early on like the Rio Grande did and in the 1960’s they mixed them up in all different configurations. Its true at the end, there were only 4 A units left. The fab 4 at the end ran typically with 3 units one direcction and the 4th facing the opposite way. I don’t have any WP books but have some magazine articles which include F unit photo’s, like an article on the inside gateway etc.
Hi,
To the best of my knowledge, only FTs had drawbars, and as indicated in earlier postings it was to allow reduced manpower (i.e. an FT A/B would be one loco and not two - requiring an additional crew). Santa Fe used drawbars a lot in the earlier years but they were dropped later on (when the union agreements were made).
Stewart FTs come with two sizes of drawbars, and you can order replacements from them. I have also made a couple from a strip of styrene, basically about 2 inches by 1/4 inch with a hole in each end.
Instead of drawbars, I would take advantage of the close coupling kits offered by KD, and to add to it, I would apply American Limited diagphrams to the locos. By the way, you may have to experiment with the drawbar length, as a “too short” one may not allow the locos to make the sharper curves on your layout.
ENJOY,
Mobilman44
I’ve been known to tie two horn hook couplers together with a wire bread tie. This keeps the couplers from separating while allowing them to slide up and down as needed.
May not be true for Rio. But in almost any F, when backing you had an as bad or worse veiw than you did in a steam loco
Standard reply to KD #5s failing = Drawbars. (Ask me how I know.
Sure, F units aren’t friendly for backing up. But I’ve never heard of that as a reason for using draw bars or read it in any publication, or book.
explain please - what you typed makes no sense. Full sentences and explanations help.