My First Impressions
Okay, we've beaten Intermountain about half to death, but as I have finally received my decoders today, I can provide a glimpse into the performance of these new locomotives, warts and all.
First the warts:
I had to perform the outrageous task of painting the nose grabs black, as this was the WM practice, not the yellow provided by IMRC. Soon I'll be switching the stock horns from 5-chime clusters, and I'll also add some cooling tubing and spark arresters to the roof.
Operationally, the only thing that bothers me is the position of the headlight LED, which sits low to allow for the cab interior. It nests in a plastic ring that is part of the split frame washer/coupler mount casting, placing it below the headlight lense itself. The LED is plenty bright, but the angle causes the wash of the light to go up in the air at about 30 degrees, projecting almost no light on the track directly in front of the engine. I didn't notice this until it was lights out time for Andy, and we were watching the train run for awhile in "Night Vision". The F7 headlight shot a pool of light up on the ceiling. It was pretty cool to watch the shadows it projected when traversing the thru truss bridge, but compared to my Atlas GP-30, which shoots a beam forward and slightly down, it was disappointing.
For those of you taking notes, the F7 light was bright enough for Andy to make a shadow puppet of our dog Marty on the ceiling. I'm not sure how that relates to the tractive effort or the mass of the alloy, but it was impressive nonetheless...
Finally, the coupling distance has to go. I can't go the route of a drawbar, prototype practice on the WM dictates that F's get mixed and matched with a variety of power. Frequently a single F would be tasked with running a bunch of empty hoppers upriver to Knobmount, so this is a possibility, but to get a proper A-B-A, I'm going to have to come up with something. I was studying the mount at the rear, and wonder if a Z-scale coupler might help.
Now the goodies...
Appearance... The numbering issue notwithstanding, these are beauties. The paint and lettering is crisp, the application of the details is precise (although one has a barely perceptible bow in the stainless grille) and the proportions are right on to my eye. Mr. Wallet better watch out when the corrected B units get here.
Performance... Now, bear in mind that these are brand new out of the box, so they will have to prove themselves over the long run, but these are by far the most superior running locomotives I have ever run. They are nearly silent, the glide across the rails, have zero issues with dead frogs, they can crawl at speed step 1 (out of 128). They are quieter than my Kato SD-40's, pull more than my Atlas SD-35's, and achieve scale speed at least as well as my late model Life Likes and Atlas motors.
DCC Install... The easiest one ever. I had to slip a wee bit of insulating tape over the brush contacts, but other than that, two screws out, swap the board, two screws back in and you're almost done. You don't have to disassemble the drive to do the basic job. You do have to solder the headlight wires to the new board, but this isn't a big deal if you are a semi experienced soldering pencil user. You do need to make sure you insulate the frame right near the headlight contacts though, or you'll cause enough of a short to blow the LED. Don't ask me how I know this...
I'd like to get some suggestions on the close coupling issue. Another though I had was to find those body mount Unimates, the ones with real short shanks and two screw holes in the draft gear. They are rigid mounts, but with the F's short wheel base that shouldn't be a problem. I'm not sure they're still available.
So there's my first impressions. I stand by my prediction that Kato is doomed to second place in the F-unit wars.
I have just taken delivery of two F-7 A's in N Scale from Intermountain, and am generally very pleased with the model's appearance.
Unfortunately, as with other Intermountain releases recently, this locomotive has been the victim of shotty research, and questionable quality control. The primary mistake apparent on the F-7 model, is the reversal of major details on the B unit. I had originally ordered two of these to accompany the A's I did get, but canceled them when I learned of the error in the shell.
Also, the Western Maryland version of this model is presented with inaccurate road numbers for the version of engine offered. This is a less egregious error than the shell problem, but given the volume of information available on the internet, and the speed with which it can be obtained, cross-referenced and confirmed, there's no excuse to miss a significant road-specific detail like this.
Overall, though, the IMRR F-7 is very nicely detailed, with factory applied grab irons, knuckle couplers, and a smooth running mechanism. The quality of the paint and lettering is excellent, and conversion to DCC is very easily accomplished. I will be making some minor modifications to mine, including painting the nose grab irons black, adding 5-chime horns per WM practice, and modifying the skirting around the fuel tanks. Other details will also be added.
Once the B-unit shell issue is resolved, I anticipate adding quite a few more of these excellent models to round out my fleet.
F-7 241 comes downgrade off the Thomas Sub with the East Local.
The East Local speeds through the pulpwood yard at Luke. The engines from Intermountain run great and look good individually. The coupling distance between the units could be improved, though.
With the advent of Intermountain's F-7 model in 2006, I promptly retired all of my Bachmann Plus and Spectrum models and sold them off. Some were custom painted and detailed, some were the factory Circus scheme with details added or numbers changed, but I had trouble converting them to DCC, so out the door they went.
Paint and Detailing
This view of WM 235 is pretty typical of the modifications I made to my Bachmann F units. I added brass wire grab irons at the side ladders, put 5-chime horns on top of the cab, and added paint and lettering.
The base coat on all my WM black diesels is a simple gloss black spray paint (yes, from a can... I hate cleaning airbrushes!) This goes over a primer to assure good coverage. Once that sets, I applied decals.
Unfortunately, the correct markings for a WM speedlettered F have never been available. I used the winged nose herald from an ancient set of Northeast Decals, which is a little too "plump" and a little too orange for my tastes.
The side lettering is the 12" herald from the MicroScale set, which is appropriate for RS-3's and switchers, but too small to represent the 14" lettering used on the F's. I made the compromise of just using the wrong size lettering on all of the engines, so at least they matched.
Purists will forgive me that #57 is modeled as a Phase II F-7, not the Phase I which was the prototype. The lashup looked pretty good together, and once they ran in for awhile, they were relatively smooth runners. The Bachmann drive tends to draw a lot of juice, which caused several decoders to fail, leading to their retirement from the layout.
#234 is in the Bachmann Plus factory painted "Circus" scheme, although I touched up the nose to correct some problems. The numberboards were painted white, and the red band below the WM herald was widened. Grabs and horns were also applied as per the other Bachmann engines.
Here's a detailed look at the nose of 235. You can see how clunky the old Northeast herald was, but as nothing else was available, it had to do. You can also clearly see the 5-chime horns by Sunrise, and the home-made wire grabs on the sides.
I also didn't bother to fill in the pilot, although I did install body mounted MT couplers.
All of the Bachmann engines have been retired and sold.