Hi all, I’m new to the forum so I'll bore you with a little background information before I ask some questions. First I’ll say that I’m typically a Chessie/ WM fan due to my proximity to “The Old Main Line” as a kid / teenager here in MD. BUT the postwar Lionel F3 ABA set that ran around the Christmas garden when I was a kid will forever have a special place in my soul! I can see that lightning striped A-unit emerging from the Styrofoam mountain/ tunnel as if it were yesterday. It was such a thrill! So, since I just acquired some beautiful N scale Intermountain F3 units in NYC paint my questions pertain to NYC F units: 1. What books have the most/ best photos of NYC F units in action? 2. Please bear with me on this one! My Lionel units featured a lightning strip with a big “zig” up front and a little “zag” in the rear. I have only seen this on pictures of E units. My intermountain F3’s have the front “zig” only. So was it as a rule that F units always had a single “zig” and E units always had a “zig” plus a second “zag”? ! 3. My Lionel units were a much lighter gray than my current Intermountain units which look practically black. However I have seen Kato F units with lighter gray paint too. I would expect that both Intermountain and Kato have done their homework prior to painting their models. Any thoughts on the F units “shades of gray” would be great! 4. And finally, I'm trying to decide if my new Intermountain NYC F3's should be pulling 40' or 50' rolling stock. Seems that my MTL 50' cars were built in the late 50's to early 60's. Has anybody ever seen a picture of 50 footers behind an F-unit lash up? Additionally I'm pretty sure that the F series units pulled mostly 55-ton hoppers during their reign. Thanks for reading this and any info from the resident experts would be greatly appreciated!
Good news. There were 50 foot box cars, etc., before the 1950's. It depends on the style of car, when they were built. There were plenty of F units, roaming US railroads, during the 1960's. And on into the 1970's. By the 1980's, they were starting to become thin in ranks. Boxcab E50
Hi Rick, and welcome to Trainboard! As moderator of the New York Central fallen flag forum, I must confess that I am an old steam curmudgeon; however, I have been learning about the Central's diseasels. As a kid, I saw most of them during the lightning stripe phase, and my favorites were the Alco FA's. As I recall back then, the freight units were black with grey stripes, and the passenger units were grey with lighter grey stripes. As for books, I would guess the "New York Central Color Photography of Ed Nowak" would be a place to start. The zigs and zags, man the Central changed things so often it was hard to keep up. Most of the freight units had no little zag in the back, just the big zig in the front. I know the E units had the zag and they may have been the only ones due to their length. All the Central freight units were numbered down in the 1000's. Wish I knew more about the diesels. Hope this helps a little.
Rick, the more I think about that "zag" on the tail end of the units, and look at photos of the name trains like the 20th Century Limited, I am convinced that they did that so that if an A unit was facing forward, the stripe line would match the passenger car stripes in height. Central was good at details like that. Therefore, on the freight units, there was no need to match anything. I don't recall any hoppers or gons with stripes (just kidding).
