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New USA Trains Locomotives!! (UP 4-8-4 Fef $3799.95, Heavyweight cars, etc)


Chuck
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Right but Amtrak ordered them first and the Chicago RTA which was later re-named Metra placed the second order. Metra at one time had like 130 of them but they were retired in the late 90's and early 2000's but not for long. They were replaced with the MP36PH but those locos have problems so the entire F40PH was brought out of mothballs and rebuilt to Phase 3 standards...and yes they are continuing to rebuild them to this very day...not bad for a 40 year old locomotive!

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I don't want to respond in the poll post to mess it up. I would have voted for the Challenger as number 1. I had to be honest in that I probably can't afford it, and won't get one. I'm not sure how much less a FEF will be by the time it finally gets released.

 I guess I'd have to vote for whichever one is priced in my low dollar range. I could sell a bunch of engines to get one. Being a diesel guy, I like a larger number in the fleet for duties!

I wonder how a 1/29 SD70ACe would do in this poll of choices???

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  • 2 weeks later...

Chuck,

 

That's cool!  40+ years on a locomotive is a long time.  We saw F40-PH2 and PH3's working CalTrain in San Francisco in 2013.  I may have seen some of those Metra F40s, too. 

An F40 and two or three amfleets is a great smallish train.  And if they do move ahead with Amtrak equipment, I wonder if we'll see the AEM-7 way down the line.  Yeah, it's a toaster and pretty ugly, but I have ridden so many miles behind them, I'd try and add it to the roster.

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Mark, I thought those AEM-7's looked kinda cool with all the lights up front! Or the ones I saw at a train store in o scale looked great with flashing strobes ontop!!

 

I have some LGB Amfleet cars and I'm selling them...the scale is typical LGB funky. I wish USA would make Superliners instead of Amfleet stuff. They could paint them in different schemes and they'd sell well! I mean Amtrak & Santa Fe ran them. 

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  • 11 months later...
 
 

Time really flies.  We are at the 1.5 year mark since this first was talked about.

 

Wanted to share that USA Trains has supposedly already paid for the production run for the Heavyweight passenger cars.  Don't have any other info on the FEF status.

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  • 1 month later...
 

This will be spectacular to see! Has there been an official announcement somewhere about a release date, specs, track curve requirements, etc? USATrains.com has nothing that I've seen. Based on the tender, I'm expecting it to be 16ft minimum diameter track requirement.

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Awesome to see an ad for the FEF-3! Where did you find this, Ray?

 

Last summer a USA Trains employee at the NGRC show told me they'd be shipping by this summer. Of course, that's very hard to believe in this hobby. Nevertheless, to me this indicates that they have actually been working on this for awhile. It's not like they are just putting out a flyer for something they may or may not build someday (e.g. Accucraft AML GP60, Dreyfuss Hudson, etc).

 

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3 hours ago, Rayman4449 said:

On the photo I saw that posted on social media and I'm guessing it is just the electronic image of what USA trains had posted at the show a couple years ago.

 

I believe I recognize it from the mail-in survey they had back in 2015, also.

So... just for fun, a little bit of speculation. Those of you lucky fellows who've been able to run the USAT Big Boy; do you think an FEF-3 tender, which doesn't seem to be all that different from a 4-8-8-4 tender, will manage a diameter of less than 16 feet? A friend and I are dearly hoping that it will be able to manage 10, but we're not holding our breath. The Hudson can manage 8 foot without trouble, but it's much, MUCH happier on 10 foot, at least in my experience. Thoughts?

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1 hour ago, Razor_Antilles said:

 

I believe I recognize it from the mail-in survey they had back in 2015, also.

So... just for fun, a little bit of speculation. Those of you lucky fellows who've been able to run the USAT Big Boy; do you think an FEF-3 tender, which doesn't seem to be all that different from a 4-8-8-4 tender, will manage a diameter of less than 16 feet? A friend and I are dearly hoping that it will be able to manage 10, but we're not holding our breath. The Hudson can manage 8 foot without trouble, but it's much, MUCH happier on 10 foot, at least in my experience. Thoughts?

 

Hmm, good question. I can try next time I run my Big Boy... I have a branch loop with 10 foot diameter. The centipede axles have a lot of play, but I would be concerned with the front truck hitting the tender body and pushing it off the track. That's a problem I had early on in a couple places (on 20 ft diameter), until I noticed the tender was leaning forward slightly. Adding a few extra washes between the front truck and tender body fixed the issue.

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5 hours ago, benshell said:

Awesome to see an ad for the FEF-3! Where did you find this, Ray?

 

Last summer a USA Trains employee at the NGRC show told me they'd be shipping by this summer. Of course, that's very hard to believe in this hobby. Nevertheless, to me this indicates that they have actually been working on this for awhile. It's not like they are just putting out a flyer for something they may or may not build someday (e.g. Accucraft AML GP60, Dreyfuss Hudson, etc).

 

Ben, That was the same vibe I got from Charles Ro last time I spoke with him on the phone last December...he'll answer the USA Trains phone from time to time. I asked if they were a few years out and he said no...less than a year :)

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I was just looking at a youtube video of UP 844, and if they maintain accuracy, only the front two axles out of seven are on a pivoting truck. In my mind, if that design is going to be compatible with anything less than 16-20ft diameter track, the rear two axles will likewise need to be on a pivoting truck. However, looking at the above picture, it appears--appears, mind you--that they have the tender's axle setup as close to the actual locomotive's setup as possible, which means five rigidly-mounted axles. But... those five axles might only add up to the same wheelbase length as the Hudson, or close to it, which would allow for compatibility on less than 16-foot, at least theoretically. On the other hand, the space between the pivoting truck and the rigid axles is less than the space between the leading truck's 2 axles on the Hudson and its six main drive wheels. Anyone with a USAT Big Boy feel like making a video where they roll the tender on 8- and 10-foot diameter track? Ben? Rayman?

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