Bachmann did this once. Bachmann, Plus, and Spectrum. The dropped plus, and are slowly moving their spectrum line back to their regular lineup. I don’t get branding.
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Last week during the fair I ran a locomotive consist of 2 BB GP35s and a BB GP7…
My point?
I still enjoy running those older Athearn BB locomotives just as much as I do my Atlas,Athearn RTR,my single Kato GP35, my 2 Bachmann and LL P2K engines.
Needless to say they ran flawlessly even though all three was over 25 years old…
The most immediately-visible problems, to me, on the BB F7s are the enormous, misshapen windshields.
Fortunately, American Model Builders makes inserts to reduce them to the right size, correct their shape and apply flush-mounted glazing, if one is willing to do the work.
Given that limited modeling time has been a bigger concern for me than cost, I switched over to having fewer F units, and going with Stewart or Genesis models that required less work.
Clarification: Sheldon/Atlantic Central…did you read my post carefully?
My reference was going way back to the early-mid 1980s, when a lot of us that were around and modeling then owned Blue Box F-units. There was no STEWART-BOWSER. There was BOWSER, well known for Pennsy based steamers and there was Stewart, which was producing diesels. There was no INTERMOUNTAIN. There was no Life Like Proto 2000/1000 series. I’m not sure if the Hi Liner shell was yet in existence.
Point of my post was that “back then” the Stewart F7, which was RTR, was considered to be a very nice step up from the Athearn F-unit, appearance and performance wise. Of course it’s not apples to apples. But our choices were quite limited then, don’t you remember?
Now since those days the bar has been raised quite high and we have a wide variety of models that we can choose from.
[quote user=“ATLANTIC CENTRAL”]
riogrande5761
AntonioFP45
I held on to my BB’s until Stewart produced their HO F-units sometime in the mid 80s (IIRC).Same with me. As soon as Stewart came out with their F units, I got rid of mine Athearn blue box F’s despite a little bit of nostalgia. I never cared for the crudness of Athearn blue box F unit - I just don’t have the warm fuzzy’s that many others in this topic seem to have for it. The horrible windshield openings, crude air grills and number boxs on the nose, etc. &nbs
If it is a price point issue strictly and you are a savvy buyer, then you can still get Stewart for a similar price give or take at train shows or on the secondary market.
OTOH, if you are a general consumer and you rely on train shops (if you have one) or online vendors and have to go with whatever is being made available on the market, then you may be stuck with what is on the store shelves, or virtual shelves - then price point unfortunately is salient. I still personally loath the Athearn/globe F7 shell but for children or modelers with non-descriminating tastes, they may be acceptable. Even as a teen I could see there was something there was something not right about the windshields.
Trainset quality is the right category if there has to be one.
I had forgotten the Stewart/Bowser F7. Hugh improvement over the old “Globe” model (duh!). Think it is a one piece casting.
Maybe Athearn could cut a deal to use it since that tooling has to be 30 years old and starting to collect dust. (Hey Bowser, can you run us a couple thousand to use in our bluebox line? Whats the bulk unit price?)
We can’t overlook Atlas F7 that was three steps above the BB FP7…That was and remains a smooth running locomotive even though its not up to todays supposed “standards”.
Hi Brakie. Yes absolutely. But it was an “FP-7” which is why I had not mentioned it. That was a sweetheart of a locomotive. Absolutely smooth running Roco powered unt and the price for several years remained at $25. A real bargain.
I still have my SCL unit and it runs just as smoothly as it did back then. It’s on my “to do” list for detailing.
The Atlas FP7 tooling went to a Brazilian company a while back - it was another F unit which I didn’t care for.
I debated buying one for a quite few years because I wanted an FP7A, particularly a Western Pacific version, but every time I looked at it, especially the awful number boards on the nose, I put my wallet back in my pocket.
And there were other things that detracted from the Roco Atlas FP7A shell like the too narrow windshields, the coupler pockets that you couldn’t get proper close coupling without some major creative surgery, and the front coupler pocket looked funky/wrong and stuck out. The side air grills that weren’t right - and those were just the obvious things that screamed at me besides the windshields and the number boards.
In the end I decided I didn’t want to spend my hard earned money on it and waited until a higher fidelity, more accurate version was tooled, and eventually two were produced, from Athearn Genesis and Intermountain. The Genesis version IMO was the best with it’s Highliner heritage.
Atlas may have had a smooth mechanism but you still have to be satisfied with the way the diesel looks and the Atlas FP7A never did satisfy me in that regard - just didn’t look right in a number of important ways. Ever since I was a little kid I noticed small details and when they were/are off, it could really bother me and some models which weren’t tooled very accurately could be that way.
I have a small fleet of of FP7’s, from Intermountian, because they come in kit form for the ATLANTIC CENTRAL.
I do agree the Highliner is the best F unit shell, but I will take an Intermountain any day as well.
The other thing I like about Genesis and Intermountain is the drives are very compatible, both in operation and shell swaping.
So most of my F units are those two brands, about 20 units all together.
Sheldon
It makes sense they would be. As I recall, Intermountain made the shell before they had a chassis, so I think it was designed to fit actually a Stewart chassis wasn’t it? And the Highliner shell was also designed to fit the Stewart chassis since it was pretty much THE major chassis of the day from the late 1980’s going forward and made by KATO to boot!
So the Stewart/KATO chassis having been the defacto chassis for the Highliner/Lubliner shell, which was bought up by Athearn and became the Genesis F unit, then Intermountain produced their shell without a chassis at first, and it also fit the KATO F chassis so people could buy the shell and use it until Intermountain had their own, it’s actually a good thing things evolved that way because it means we have 3 different brands of F units which can essentially swap chassis with little effort - I think it would only be the clips or the method of fastening them on that may vary?
I personally don’t own any Intermountain F units but some day I may get some - but mainly I’m a 1970’s and 1980’s modeler and only have a few F’s for a little bit of 1960’s running for fun (Genesis F9ABBBA set, Genesis F3 ABBA plus a F9m (F3 wreck rebuild) and a single Genesis F7A) pretty much all D&RGW CZ passenger power of the mid/late 1960’s. Also 10 Stewart F7s as well - the 4-stripe D&RGW loco’s - not as fancy as the Genesis version but pretty nice still.
Yes, that is pretty much how it evolved. The Kato/Stewart drive was a great drive, but like I said, I just could not get into the lack of the seperate detail parts at the prices they were asking.
And of course Bowser has changed the drive, added the details, but I have plenty of the other two brands now.
I have C&O, B&O and Western Maryland versions as well as those lettered ATLANTIC CENTRAL.
Thinking abo
When it first came out, the Stewart was THE best F hands down, but after the Genesis and Intermountain came out, they beat out Stewarts shell yes with all the details although the Stewart drive was, on the average still probably the most bullet proof - from what I’ve read some have had problems here and their with a few of the early Genesis drives for example (back around 2002 or so).
My Stewart F7’s I’m keeping as freight units and I’ll probably weather them up some as they appeared in the mi-1960’s. The one thing I don’t like as much about them is the mold parting line on the sides of the nose - of course if you have a shell that you paint, you can take care of that with a little sanding and detail up the shell to look nice like Jim Six did with some of his in his B&O examples back in the day. The Kadee close couple kits work well with them too between the B ends.
All my cab unit diesels, Proto E units, FA’s and PA’s, various brands of F units, are all close coupled with working diaphragms - I model that era when they where all realtively new and generally would have still had the diaphragms.
Cab diesels or passenger cars, working and touching diaphragms is something I am really big on.
My passenger cars, when coupled to the front of a diesel, the passenger car diaphragm rides on the buffer, just like the real thing.
I pay attention to freight car spacing as well - cars with poorly positioned couple pockets often get short shank couplers to get closer to a scale coupling distance.
In my view, close coupling is one of the things that separates model trains from “toy” trains…
Sheldon