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I don't know what an FP7 is supposed to sound like, but it can't be this. When I first put this thing on the rails I thought maybe I'd accidentally received a non-decoder version because the sound it makes when sitting there idling is very much like the whiny racket a DC locomotive makes when sitting on AC rails.
Yes, I still have it (haven't finished testing it yet). It runs fine, it just doesn't sound very good. Internally it's basically the same as the previous Model Power / Ajin "Hobbyist" version. Apart from the new LED headlight board and the sound decoder (wired up and elegantly insulated with scotch tape), the only other difference is that the couplers have been changed from Rapidos to E-Z Mates (the same ones Bachmann uses).P.S. If you want to take it off my hands, it's all yours
No thanks Mark, I think that I'll pass on this "gem". So does it actually make sounds other than the nasty sound you described above? Horns, bell, "real" motor sound? Or should I just wait for your complete review? That speaker doesn't seem to be in any sort of a enclosure - that in itself will result in a very poor sound. Who designs these things? Do they have any clue?
Perhaps I wasn't clear - the nasty noise I described earlier *is* the diesel motor sound (I just didn't recognize it as such right away).
As cjm413 correctly indicates, on All Tramps Sent Free EMD F-units, only the Bs had steam generators. This seems to have been a practice peculiar to ATSF, as I am not aware on any other roads that did them that way. I wonder if it was a holdover from the passenger FTs, which had room only in the B-unit for a steam generator. (another peculiarity of FTs was that the batteries were jammed into the smaller A unit, despite there being more room for them in the B)B&O did have some dual service F-3s that it ordered as A-A pairs from EMD: one had the steam generator and small water tanks, the other one had extra water tanks. Of course, as the passenger trains disappeared, the railroad did break up the pairs.I was not aware that Sudden Pathetic had regular F-7As with steam generators. They must not have worked the SF Peninsula. SSWs FP-7 did, and it was on its last leg when I rode behind it in high school. It often worked #110, which was usually only a single Harriman sub (the mail and express traffic that it carried when it initially was carded in the late nineteenth century had disappeared by the mid-1960s). If you had to be at Bellarmine or St. Francis for an activity before school you rode that one instead of #112, which was the "Schoolbus on Rails", and got you there just before home room. I do not recall seeing those other F-7s with steam generators on either freight or passenger trains on the SF Peninsula.The freights got a mixed bag of power, but mostly EMDs. Most of the yard goats were FMs. GP-9s usually powered the local freights. Occasionally, an RSD-4 would show up in Santa Clara Yards (I saw the crew fire off one of those one time while I was waiting for a train at Santa Clara. These flames shot from the exhaust stack then a thick cloud of black smoke everywhere.....................)The Daylight, by that time, usually had E-units. The Del Monte usually had a pair of torpedo boat GP-9s (although some times it had one or two with dynamic brakes and a steam generator). Weekdays, the commutes were mostly Trainmasters; weekends "Cadillacs" (SD-7 or SD-9) and GP-9s. I do not recall ever seeing a regular F-7 with a steam generator there, though.
-Mark P.S. If you want to take it off my hands, it's all yours
Is it still available?
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Topic: Model Power FP7 (Read 3804 times)
