Product Features and Details
As early as the Thirties, passenger traffic in the USA was increasingly shifting from the railroad to the automobile and airplane. Amtrak was founded in 1971 to avoid a total demise of passenger train service, a partially government owned company that took over passenger service from the railroads, which were mainly focused on freight service. Existing motive power and rolling stock was taken over from the predecessor railroads for this operation, thus the famous F7 and streamliner express train passenger cars. These units were quickly painted in a new look with a silver basic color and red/white/blue stripes. Service was started in May of 1971 with this motive power and rolling stock, whereby some of the famous names of the trains were kept. There thus continued to be the "Sunset Limited", which ran between New Orleans and Los Angeles. Naturally, newer locomotives with the Superliner bi-level cars are currently running on Amtrak, but our models show how everything began 50 years ago.
This is a model of an EMD F7 A unit diesel locomotive painted and lettered for the American railroad Amtrak. The paint scheme and lettering are prototypical for Era IV. Both trucks are driven by powerful ball bearing Bühler motors. Traction tires. The locomotive has a built-in mfx/DCC decoder with a variety of light and sound functions that can be controlled digitally. It also has a built-in socket on the back of the locomotive to supply power from the decoder in the A unit to the speaker in the B unit to go with this locomotive. The locomotive has many separately applied details, and the cab doors can be opened. Length over the couplers 61 cm / 24".
The B unit to go with this locomotive is available under item number 21581, and another A unit with a different road number is available under item number 21582. A typical express train from Era IV – such as the famous "Sunset Limited" – can be made with the equally available new Amtrak cars.
The running sounds also work in analog operation.
