Hey all, I've been gifted a train from my Grandparents that I know very little about. I'm hoping that some of you can identify it from the little information I know. I know that it's a blue-and-yellow Chessie F7, with a matching pseudo-car behind it. (Side note- I don't know the actual name. It looks like the locomotive, but with a couple porthole windows and no cab. Basically just a rectangle on wheels) It has a Chessie caboose with silver roof. I've put some photos I found at the end of this thread. It also has a series of freight cars. There's a 1. ATSF boxcar in a rusty red, with black roof 2. Yellow cattle car with black roof and opening doors 3. Orange refrigerated boxcar with a yellow "Smith" logo (May be "Swift", it's been a while) 4. Tank car, grey The only details I know for sure is that it was made by Life-Like Trains, is HO scale, and was purchased somewhere between 1980-1999 The Locomotive The weird pseudo-car, but on mine the top and logo is a dark blue The caboose
by 'pseudo-car' do you mean B-unit? What else do you want us to identify, it seems like you already know pretty much everything about the set. Your images aren't loading either.
It looks like a locomotive because it is a locomotive. You have two locomotives, an F-7A and an F-7B. This F-7B, like many built at the time, is a dummy, an unpowered model of a powered vehicle. Are you wondering if a booster like the F-7B can operate a train alone? No. A train needs a crew. But an F-7A only makes 1500 horsepower. There aren't very many trains it can haul by itself, either. Eliminating the cab makes for a more streamlined lash-up, costs less, and leaves room for certain roads (the Santa Fe) to store water to feed the steam generator, which heats passenger cars in the winter and powers the air conditioning in the summer. You know what it is. Are you asking if it's worth anything? No. Sorry. Life-Like HO from that era are neither outstanding nor uncommon, keeping supply high and demand lackluster.
Ahh, thanks. I wouldn't have guessed it was another locomotive. I don't want to sell it, It was in my family for a good few decades before it came to me. I was just wondering how it was sold, mainly because I can't find anything on it with these specific cars. I know it wasn't pieced together, mainly because my grandparents didn't have much at the time. They don't remember how they got it, and I was curious as to where they could've gotten it.
Any department store, or near Christmas time, many hardware stores, some five and dimes (those were dollar stores back when the dollar was not yet worth only a nickel), all kinds of places. Life Like sold few items a la carte, mostly they were sets. They weren't terribly expensive.
