In the mid 1960s, Mantua/TYCO put out a dual motored version of their F9 diesel model. A honest effort, it still could not compete with Irv Athearn's beloved creations, which were cheaper and much more reliable. The concept simply took a balky mechanism with not enough electrical pickup and no way to disassemble it for maintenance, and stuffed it under the hood with another balky mechanism with not enough electrical pickup and no way to disassemble it for maintenance.
Information is scant, there are few of these around, the coveted ones being those that were offered to dealers and sported a clear see-thru shell, so that you could see the balky mechanisms with not enough electrical pickup and no way to disassemble them for maintenance at work. Mine came in a box lot I picked up at a local club open house last weekend. That it's a War Bonnet F9 with very little wear on its paint is sweet enough for me.
3 comments:
I like this loco and its painting scheme, though I wonder why they designed its rear side so... non-fantasy styled, if I may say so. Like an unfinished symphony. Still beautiful, anyway.
I expect they would look odd over there, especially with Swiss NOHABs that look similar, but have operator cabs at both ends. The F and E unit diesels were built to be joined up with cabless b units followed by another a unit, much like this...
http://store.trainzpreorder.com/Image.aspx?URL=http://www.mthtrains.com/sites/default/files/images/prod_pics/20-20055-1.jpg
When seen that way, they don't look out of place.
What's interesting on the end of most F unit models over here is the slight point on the back off of the roof line. That was on the original blueprints for the real locomotives but dropped during production. None of the real ones ever had it and most manufacturers of the models never corrected it.
Yup, I understand now... kind of "triple power-unit" for trains. I remember that I saw some pictures of an experimental/prototype Romanian diesel locomotive just like this loco of yours - but they never built (as far as I know) a second or a third part/unit.
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