IM FT's, review and photo's

Hi friends
My three sets came this afternoon and I must say that I'm completely blown away by the level of detail and operation. They run very smooth with a little armature whine right out of the box but after about 10 minutes of running they all smoothed down and sound like my Kato F's. The 4 units tested so far pull just a little harder than my ABBA set of Kato F's but its hard to tell how much, they are very close. The paint work is the best I have
ever seen on any N scale release with all the correct numbers put on by the factory, even the number boards! Intermountain had to use draw bars on all the FT's released for one very good reason, the way the truck is designed its near impossible to mount a coupler on the rear of the A unit and the same end of the matching B unit but the spacing between the draw bared units is VERY close. The distance between the units is about half the distance of my Kato F's with short shank unimates. One thing I do not like is the coupled distance between two AB sets coupled back to back, its like having a AB BA rather than a ABBA. I have a couple of ideas how to close this gap, either draw bar all 4 units together or figure a way to set the coupler back a little to close the gap.

Even though the draw bars are a pain its minor to the complete package, trust me when I say this, models have been compared to brass before but these FT's are truly that good with Kato smooth operation. On a scale of 1 to 10 I give them an 8, this is only do to the draw bars and the pain its going to be for ATSF modelers to work around them. Throw the draw bars out and this release is a very solid 10.

 

Bob, thanks for the review and the photos. Regards your comment about the drawbars creating an AB BA consist, many railroads ran their FTs this way initially.

The B&M purchased their FT A and B units as one single-numbered set coupled with drawbars. When the B&M ran a four unit AB+BA set, the two B units were connected with couplers. This configuration had visibly more distance between the two coupled B units than there was between the drawbarred A and B units. I'm looking for a good enough photo of a B&M AB+BA FT consist that I can get measurements from. If I can find one, it would be interesting to see how accurate the IM AB+BA dimensions actually are.

Thanks again for the photos, that is a very impressive model!

[ 13. November 2002, 03:39: Message edited by: Hank Coolidge ]

 

The ATSF also ran them ABBA. The reason I put the space between the B's (AB BA) was to point out the rather large coupler distance between two AB sets coupled back to back.

 

I found a very easy fix to get the B units coupling closer. The couplers used on the FT's are made by Atlas and these screw on just like a MT coupler, the pad that the coupler is screwed to is made of plastic and has a small raised area behind the mounted coupler. I removed the coupler and filed this raised area flat, I then relocated the coupler back on the mounting pad till the back of the coupler box was even with the back of the coupler pad. I marked the screw hole and drilled a new one with a #64 drill bit and mounted the coupler in the new location. The distance between the coupled B units is now the same as the distance between the A & B units with the draw bar and the complete job on both units took less than 20 minutes.

I forgot this earlier, handle the B units with care, if you pick your B unit up by the shell the drive will more than likely fall out the bottom leaving the shell in your hand. All three of my B units do this but the A units fit tight.

 

They look very good. Hope the T-motors are of the same quality. Hank, something else to note about the B&M FTs. It wasn't long before they broke up the ABBA sets and started running the AB FTs with an F2 (they bought 24 F2s for this purpose specifically). Just something to keep in mind for your modeling.

[ 13. November 2002, 08:51: Message edited by: Harron ]

 

Corey, one other note about the B&M FT AB sets. B&M replaced the drawbars with couplers soon after delivery to give more flexibility in configuring power. This became obvious when only one unit of a set required maintenance.

I had forgotten about the F2 purchase ... thanks.

[ 13. November 2002, 14:47: Message edited by: Hank Coolidge ]

 

Seeing FTA or FTB units operated alone in a consist was fairly unusual.... The AT&SF did reconfigure (some of?) their units so they could operate on their own (the A and the B were not designed by EMD as stand-alone units... the batteries, for example were only in one of the two units in a drawbared set).
Many roads kept the drawbar arrangement (even when the ABBA sets were broken up into FT AB/ F2A sets the F2As were initially drawbared) right up to the end. The CB&Q, for one, as far as I know, never operated an FT by itself ...just A/B drawbared lashups.
The Santa Fe did order some FTs as ABB sets and in order to accomodate the most convoluted numbering and renumbering history of any railroad's diesels, they (mostly?) had couplers on both ends....
Charlie

 

I broke up the ABBA and made a more correct ABBB similar to standard ATSF practice in the early 1940's

 

Awesome work, Bob! This is a dumb question I know, but that second B unit in your photo is reversed, is that how they always ran them? Also, when ATSF got their F3's and F7's, were they ever run ABBB or was it always ABBA? Thanks.

 

Yes the second B unit is correct and it was very common to see both Warbonnet F3's & 7's running ABB, ABBA, ABBBA and sometimes ABBB. I have even seen AABBBA.

 

Cool! Thanks!

 

Thanks Bob. Great write-up and beautiful pics.
Bill