For Santa Fe Fans (and Others): A Few Questions

@Ed Kelly posted:

Hi,

A couple of questions:

1.  Just received my ATSF F-3's.  The look great but the sides are quite shiny and the roof and ends are duller.  Is this prototypical?

Yes.

2. The numbers of the ABBA units are: A unit: 30C, B unit: 30A, B unit: 30B, and A unit: 30L. Are these numbers right for the units or are they scrambled a bit?

Unlike ever other railroad, the Santa Fe designated the F Units; "L" = Lead, or the lead cab unit, "A" the next booster unit, "B" the second booster unit, and "C" the last, or rear, cab unit. Strange, but it worked for the Santa Fe. I'll have to assume that you are NOT a Santa Fe modeler.

3.  I have an NCE system so what do I use for long addresses since the numbers are all 30 plus a letter?

I have no idea about that. Someone else will have to explain that.

Totally confused!

Thanks,

Ed

Hello Ed:

The quick answer is yes, based on the information you wrote, the numbers are correct and the stainless (shinny) side panels are also correct. However, if you have more specific concerns, posting images along with your question might be more helpful.

Charlie

Santa Fe purchased all their F3 and F7 passenger diesels in sets, either 6000 hp (ABBA) or 4500 hp (ABB). F3s were all purchased as ABBA sets. They we numbered, in your case, 30L (lead A), 30 A (first B), 30 B (second B), and 30 C (last A). The A units had a small L or C at the bottom of the cigar band on the nose. Up till around 1955-1956 Santa Fe operated the locomotives in as delivered sets. After that they were mixed and matched as needed. Since the sets were broken up the "C" A unit got the letter C in the number board (the "L" A units never did). So from the late 50s on 30 C's number board would display "30C". The same system applied to freight F3s and F7s.

Here's some good info on the Santa Fe's passenger F3s: http://old.atsfrr.org/resources/funits/f3-pas.htm

Basically, Santa Fe passenger F-units of the 22LABC sets and beyond had stainless steel side panels.  Roofs and ends were painted silver. The 16LABC sets had all painted side panels, roofs and ends as did the FTs that were briefly in passenger service.

Rusty

For NCE, I would just program a long address value of 301 (30L), 302 (30A), 303 (30B), 304 (30C).  You only have numbers to choose from so you can do it this way or make up your own formula for how you want to denote these alphanumeric unit numbers.  If you build assign them to a consist with 30L built into the NCE Advanced Consist as the lead unit, then you would call up consist by the lead unit, e.g. 301 in the example above.  Another option is to program as 030, 031, 032, 033 (note the leading zero in the number so the NCE command station recognizes these as long addresses and not short addresses, e.g. short addresses are less than 128.  Also remember that to call up an loco as a long address, then you need to deliberately call it up with a leading zero, e.g. 030, not 30, since 30 is recognized by the NCE command station as a short address, not a long address.

Since NCE uses this short address space below 128 for assigning alias consist addresses, e.g. groups of long addresses combined in a consist will be assigned a short address value (a value less than 128) and the command station will address whole consist just by this short address value (all of this goes on behind the scenes in the digital packets that it sends down the rails).  Your throttle will just show the consist number as the long address of the lead unit but it is really talking digitally to the consist as a short address value, e.g. an alias value for the mixed group of long addresses.   Remember that if you take your digital Advanced Consist to another layout, you will need to remember break the consist on your layout's NCE system and then rebuild it on the new layout since the NCE Advanced Consist feature stores some of the consist data in the individual decoder's memory and some in your NCE command station.  Therefore, even if you go to another NCE layout, the data in the loco decoder will still be present but you obviously won't have the command station data in the new layout's command station.  Therefore, your consist is invalid and will not run on the new layout until you rebuild the consist from scratch again so both the decoder consist data and the command station consist data match up.  This Advanced Consist feature really bites a lot of novice users that like to take their Advanced Consisted locos to different layouts - remember to break, then make, and you'll be fine if you like to take your locos on road trips.

Scott

Ed

Since you likely will be running the ABBA's in a fixed 4 unit MU set I'd assign the same 2 digit DCC  address to each unit - in this case simply 30.  The only special programming required is when you configure the address of the trailing A unit (30l) you will set up the direction bit to be reverse of the other 3 units (which have direction "normal".  This is  easy to do in the Config option once you start  Programming on the Main with your NCE throttle.  Configure one unit at a time remembering that the default address for new DCC decoders is 3.  Your NCE manual can guide you through the few steps to config the address and direction setup.  If you need  help you have my number. 

For modelers of railroads where diesels were assigned in semi permanent sets - as was common PRR motive power assignment practice in the early diesel years, this is simple and effective.   On my railroad units within  ABA, AB, AA MU'd diesel "sets" share a common DCC 4 digit address.  The address I use is the road number on the lead A unit - the one with crew members in the cab.  With this approach we only use the DCC consisting feature to associate temporarily grouped locomotives such as for double heading.  

Hi all,

Fantastic information.  Thanks to all.

John, they are Sunset models.

Again, thanks to all.

Ed

I would definitely agree on the programing attributes with 301, 302 etc.  I also take a small piece of masking tape and write the unit number and put on bottom of fuel tank.  Some people have used Sharpies, but to me don't want to devalue anything etc.  

As for the Silver and the Stainless Steel, yes they are definite Santa Fe specs.  Keep in mind in that era there was tremendous pride in cleanliness so normally outside of a very small amount of grime on an enroute trip they were kept very clean.

Would love to see pictures of them.