   |
 245L shows the final appearance of most Santa Fe F7's with fuel tank skirts removed and spark arrestors, nose MU doors, wrecking lugs and a host of grab irons installed. She was tied up at Larned, Kansas for use on the Jetmore branch during the wheat harvest rush in July 1973.  The engineer gives the photographer a wave as F7 259C and GP7 2722 cross the Ash Creek bridge west of Pawnee Rock, Kansas with a westbound Jetmore branch train. In the summer of 1970 wheat was still shipped in boxcars. Within a few years however, covered hoppers will usurp the 50-foot boxcar sending thousands of them to scrap.  253C heads up a westbound freight near Great Bend, Kansas in August 1970. Matched A-B-B-A sets of F's were relatively rare by this late date as the typical lashup included a few Geeps. |
|
I seem to recall an F7 shell being made in brass for use with an Athearn chasis, but I cannot recall who imported it. My impression at the time was that the Athearn F7 was much better than the brass shell. F7’s are probably low on most brass importers’ priority lists because too many plastic F7 models make it too big of a risk for an importer to consider producing a brass F7, I assume. Highliners has a B-unit kit available that is designed to be built into any F3B or F7B variant. Many extra parts are included in this kit which could be useful for modifying other brands of F-units to Santa Fe variants. The Highliner kit would be the logical choice for modeling one of the 260 through 267 series B-units that did not have stainless steel grilles. The F3 slit type D/B casting could be installed in an Athearn single headlight F7A or a B-unit to create freight F3’s 200LABC or 201LABC. With a great deal of other modifications, the extra 48" D/B fan could be applied to an Athearn F7 along with Detail Associates’ vertical slit grilles to create a late production F7 in the 269 through 280 series. Highliners is promising an A-unit kit that can be built into any F3A or F7A variant, but is not yet available. I have a couple of the Highliner B-unit kits on hand, but I have not yet attempted to assemble one. I can see that the quality of the kit parts looks to be excellent, but I can also see that building one of these kits will be a good project for a kit builder of some experience. |
|
|
