MRC F Units

Anybody have any experience or opinions with the MRC Platinum “F” engines? Thanks Bill

Those things are still around and being offered by MRC ? I believe it dates from around 2001.

IIRC, it is a Walters Train Line engine with an MRC decoder installed – one of the first decoders MRC ever tried marketing. They offered the locomotive and five extra decoders for the price of the loco alone back when it was first offered. The decoder in the locomotive was bad as were four of the five extra decoders.

The engine runs okay if you take the MRC decoder out and install a different, better one or run it on DC without a decoder.

I thought those things were long gone.

They were marketed as a “premium” loco with a price tomatch, if I remember right.

They sat waaaay too high, ran well, and IMHO, were pretty much trainset material.

They got HORRIBLE reviews, I think, and were quickly bargain bin priced.

However, I’ve only seen them, and never owned one. I knew one guy who bought a couple, reworked them and had a couple of really nice F units,but he spent alot of time on them.

I don’t have any. However, there was an identical question to yours back in June 2010. The link to that thread is here: http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/forums/p/176685/1939599.aspx#1939599

Thanks, that answers my questions, I should have done a search for this info. Thanks again. Bill

Yes I remember the MRC F units, they came out in 2001 for a very short time.

I picked up a couple of A units when MRC was clearing them out for $14.99 an engine. The are DCC equipped and run just fine. Especially when I consider what I paid. The

I remember reading a review and the only negative thing said was that the engine sat too high, a full 6" to high. Not being a rivet counter I hardly notice the difference between the MRC and other manufacture3re’s units. There was also a comment that the screen was found to be loose on some new models. I seem to remember that Genesis and Intermountain both had periodic problems with loose screens. Result was the screens could in all cases be re-glued into place.

Everything else in the review was mentioning how many other manufacturers were competing to provide EMD F units and that there was nothing special about the MRC engines.

Yes, the MR units were originally set at the high end of MSRP. I guess that is what killed them, they were gone not that long after they were first introduced.

I would rate the MRC units better than the regular Athearn as they have more detail and just less than the Genesis, Intermountain and Walthers which clearly have more detail. Then again the MRC units I have seen advertised as usually priced very low and probably a good buy. There is still a review of the engines on the web.

http://www.internetmodeler.com/2001/january/railroad/mrc_f7a_review.htm

However, as the MRC engines are no longer being produced they really are no longer in competition…

It’s been a while since I’ve seen the MRC F7A. It’s funny what memories you take away, and the one I remember were the chunky horns on the roof.

The model in the review you linked is not a typical F7A. The phase details are an odd mix! There must have been a diesel this model was copied from in real life, but I can’t remember seeing one with phase I F7 side louvers, yet it has phase II 48-inch dynamic brake roof fan? Not only that but it has steam generator details on the rear of the roof, which was extremely rare in production F7A’s. Yes, Rio Grande actually bought too “short” FP7A’s or F7A with steam generators, but they only had the steam generators for 4 years and after that they were removed and ran the remainder without until retired.

So the F7A MRC produced was a non-typical mix of phase I and phase II details. I tend to like to buy F units which are representative of 1) what was typical and 2) what was prototypical.

The typical phase I F7A had 4 horizontal louvers on the side panels. It had horizontal air grills on the top panal and the roof had 36 inch axial db fan, and no steam generator.

The typical phase II F7A had 4 vertical slit louvers on the side panels It had Farr air gills on the top side chord and the roof had a 48 inch axial db fan, and no steam generator.

I have 3 of them, all A units and still in boxes. The detail is very good, better than standard Athearn or ‘train set’ quality. They run smoothly on DC and I don’t even know if mine are DCC as I don’t remember seeing anythng about it on the boxex. I paid about #30 each and would consider them reasonable models with room for superdetailing.

Just my opinion,

  • Bob

I suggest that you take a look at the link I posted above, http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/forums/p/176685/1939599.aspx#1939599.

In that post I pretty much summarized a review that was in Model Railroader. I believe that they found fault with more than the 6 inch height issue.