Well, in its day, the Globe/Athearn F7 was one of the best, most detailed, most accurate models on the market.
Way better than the Varney F3 by a long shot.
The biggest thing that makes it look wider are the thick molded on grills.
And yes, some of the detail is bulky.
With some work and some detail parts they are still pretty good. I don't know that would couple them to my GENESIS or Intermountain units, but I have an ABA set I did years ago and as a set they look pretty good with the American Limited diaphragms and close coupling.
The only photo I have is this one while I was still working on one of the A units:
The picture is not close up (click on it?), but compare the B unit with the detail of the Proto2000 PA behind it?
I installed can motors, rewired them, put GSB cab interiors in the A units, Walthers diesel dress up kits, CalScale MU hoses, and the diaphragms/close coupling.
Would I bother to do another set? Well I do have a half finished AB set where the A unit has been lengthened into a FP7, I will finish that project, but the rest of my F unit fleet is Intermountain (including some of their FP7's) and Genesis mostly.
Sheldon
The only F units I can think of that would look decent next to the old Athearns are the Mantua models. Putting the two side by side, they definitely copid the Globe tooling for the most part, but shrank the fuel tank a bit to make room for the MU-2 power truck.
SeeYou190 but probably every F unit since then has been an improvement.
but probably every F unit since then has been an improvement.
The F units by Gem/Bachmann and Life-Like, and the late Tyco model could be considered more crude.
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Not going to disagree with anything previously posted. The old BB F's can be detailed up; especially if you consist them together. I have more than several that I have updated over the years; and they are great runners and look good in numbers. I also have 1 new Genesis F7A; it is beautiful, but the cost has precluded me from purchasing any more, at least at the present time.
Yes, the old (super-old) blue box F units are all kinds of incorrect. At the time they were new, they were OK, but probably every F unit since then has been an improvement.
I would not mix them in with any other F units made by anyone.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
The old Athearn blue box F units are based on 1950's tooling. Even the ones sold as RTR, now in the Roundhouse line, are still from the same tooling, which is very crude by todays standards. It depends on your tolerance level, but surely there are better alternatives. Even the late 80's tooled Stewarts are much better.
As for being fooled, I don't think Athearn has tried to fool anyone. I haven't compared the blue box F to the Genesis directly; but I sold my blue box F's nearly 20 years ago. I do happen to have an old F7A undec shell in a box I can drag out.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
When train shows resume, start going. I always see old Athearn BB models in the cheap boxes. You may have to search unless you plan to strip and repaint them, but it's easy enough to remove the old motors and gearboxes to create dummies. That has the advantage of giving you metal wheels and wiring so it's easy to add a decoder and make a sound dummy.
I have no new F7s, but my old GP9 engines are considerably wider than the new ones. I have a Walthers GP9M from their budget line, and curiously enough it seems to be based on the old BB profile.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
I don't think Athearn made any bones about the fact that the Genesis F units that used the Highliner tooling was far better and more accurate in just about every way than the old Blue Box F unit tooling, which was first made by Globe to be sold for 98 cents as a dummy - colored gold by the way. The pricing alone would confirm it. Indeed it is almost remarkable how long that Globe tooling remained at least "acceptable" to the hobby given its origins as an ultra-cheap near-toy.
I no longer recall if my Athearn Blue Box F7 looked wider or taller than my metal Varney F3.
Many Athearn models were sized for practicality rather than scale accuracy. Their GP 7, 30, and 35 and SD 7 locomotives had overwide hoods to accomodate the Athearn motors, as did I think their switchers, until they abruptly made future models more correct (perhaps starting with the SD40-2?). So a consist of old and new Athearn diesels in the same train created an odd look. The "wrong" Athearns looked OK by themselves but not when coupled to a correct width EMD. Their Boston & Maine 4-6-2 was oversized (but not the tender if I recall right) for similar reasons, and their 0-4-2T was noticeably larger than a brass import of the same prototype that was offered. And they were hardly the only manufacturer to make stuff oversized for practical reasons - Tyco's Petticoat Junction 4-6-0 and AHM's 4-4-0 and 2-4-0 come to mind as well. Shades of the early years of the hobby when the British decided against true 1:87.1 HO but put their OO scale 1:76 stuff on HO track. They felt they needed the larger size bodies for practical reasons.
Dave Nelson
If Im understanding you correctly, you're saying the older bluebox engines were oversized compared to todays modern engines...
Yes, old Athearn Bluebox engines tend to be oversized. There may be exceptions, but for example, their original GP9 engines were thicc, since they had to fit their large motor into the engine. I wouldnt be surprised if their F7s were also a tad oversized.
Id recommend getting some F7 from some older Genesis Yellow box F7 units for dummies instead.
Edit: or stewart/kato, or Intermoutain, or BLI, or MTH, etc.
Charles
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Modeling the PRR & NYC in HO
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Anybody noticed the difference in size between the old Athearn Blue Box F7 and the newer reditiontion by Athearn and others. I wanted to add some "dummy" unmits to my Genesis F7 A&B and gor out my old Blue Box models. The old Athearns are lager in width and heightand don't the new olnes at all. I have yet to do any measurements but viewing them really shows a siffferenc. The question is have we all been fooled all these years by Atheran as to accuracy of their models?