I, like many, love the LGB F7 diesels, but the front truck position really bothers me, its to far forward and throws off the balanced look of the prototype.I wanted to document this modification here for beginners that might be considering the LGB F7 but like me, are bothered that the front truck sits to close to the pilot skirt and needs moved rearward toward the fuel tank to “look” more correct. When you look at the pics, the folks at LGB knew this might be an issue as there are 2 unused factory screw holes to move the truck bolster rearward. But when you do this, you have to body mount the front coupler. I reuse the coupler mount but remove the linkage plate and centering spring from the front truck. I then drill a small hole thru it and the pilot frame and put a single LGB philips head screw thru it to hold the mount to the frame. I use LGB knuckles as they behave the best on my tight radius curves. I then remount the front truck using the rear most holes for the two bolster mounting screws. A simple, easy peasy, modification that really improves the look of a fine model.

Here is a pic with the front truck hanging off to one side, you can see the original coupler mount in its position, but screwed to the frame of the engine. You can also see the two pairs of bolster mounting holes in the frame, front set is the stock position, the rear pair is where I move the bolster to once I mount the coupler to the locomotive’s frame. I will take a nice side shot here in a little bit on my layout.

I had not yet removed the centering spring for the original swinging coupler, you can see it in the front truck if you look closely, this just pulls out of the truck body. I put this and all the electrical track power pickups in a zip lock bag as I converted to onboard battery at the same time. This way I can convert the engine back to “as built” configuration should I wish to sell or trade the engine off. Mike the Aspie

Side shot sitting on my little railway this morning.

Nice job Mike , its little projects like these that make the hobby fun. Congrat’s !

Mike,

Good job. It looks terrific. (https://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-laughing.gif)

It is interesting how what would seem to be minor dimensions have such an impact on the visual appeal of things.

Guess its from being around a real F7 for several years when I was right out of high school. Local shortline leased two Ex Milw-Rd units from the local museum, both painted in Monon passenger colors and pulled freight with them till funds allowed purchase of more units. Was going to have my NYC redone to be one of those units, but the cost to add the second headlight, winterization hatch and paint was not in the budget. So going to leave her in that classy lighting stripe scheme. Mike the Aspie

And the Fs wore those stripes well. Without going to look in books or Google, I want to remember Monon had 2 different liveries each based on colors of a college the line served; black/gold and red/grey.

And want to remember that in a past decade Model Railroader magazine had an article series about modeling what they called “Pike sized passenger trains”.
And an illustration was an HO F unit with cars in the red-white-grey, and it was by an interesting brick freight station at town named Gosport.

Now, off to play in Google to see whether there is any validity to those recollections.

Edit: there is the model photo, http://www.monon.org/models/mckalip/McKalipMonon114.jpg except I remember it in color.