ES44xx and ET44xx

[atsf3751]

Is this the modern version of the F7? There are four companies I know of announcing these engines, Fox Valley, Kato (they were first), Intermountain and Scale Trains. I have a Scale Trains one in the mail and I have my older Katos and earlier Fox Valley engines (where I added all the free standing hand grabs) and I am waiting to see what they look like and how they compare to my existing models.

Having added all those grabs by hand was tedious work and I can see why they might not be perfect in a production environment, mine certainly aren't, and a couple of them were nearly impossible.

[Mark5]

The ET series are quite different than the ES series - I don't recall Kato or FVM making these.

Mark

[Philip H]

The ET series are quite different than the ES series - I don't recall Kato or FVM making these.

Mark

 I thought that was mostly internal, but I don't have a good spotting feature guide for the really modern stuff.

[Mark5]

The ET44 is 16" longer. The front third is mostly the same, but the back 2/3 is quite different - sort of like how an SD45 long hood is different than a SD40 long hood (much larger radiator section).

Mark

[jpwisc]

Like Mark said, these are very different engines. If would be like saying an F3 and F7 are the same thing.

There is so much variety in modern engines. I’m glad to see different manufacturers hitting the ES44s, ET44s, 70Hs, and so on. This is a great time to be a modern modeler in N.

[ryan_wilkerson]

I believe he was mixing the model types...if I remember correctly, these are the ones delivered/announced:

ES44  Kato
ES44  FVM
ES44  BLI

ET44  Scale Trains
ET44  Intermountain (some amount of design/work by FVM)

The ET series are quite different than the ES series - I don't recall Kato or FVM making these.

Mark