Lionel F3 Size

The original F3's were pretty close to scale.  They just aren't as detailed.

The MPC F-3s are not scale. They use Post War tooling.  They look slightly "small" next to the scale proportioned F-3s that were made with later tooling, but they still look good!

Ed Boyle

I have a set of PW Santa Fe 2343AAs on a shelf in my office.  I enjoy looking at them and running both Lionel, MTH and Williams by Bachmann repros on my layout and club layouts.  Don't run the originals because of maintenance issues.

Sure do like looking at them though.

Ed Boyle

I have both the old non-scale post-war mold-based F3s, and some of the much newer scale-or-dang-close-to-it F3s.  The difference in size is something you don't notice unless they are very close, and then not something to worry about: I wouldn't mix A and B units across the two generations, but I have had them on adfacent tracks and they look fine that way.  

But there is a bigger difference that I do notice: all of my Lionel F3s are ATSF Warbonnet, and the difference in the red, older to newer, is very noticeable.  I'm okay with it because in the real work some locos were badly sun faded and others were breshily painted - but it is a big difference.   

Lee,

The story behind the difference in color of the red Warbonnet on Lionel F3s is an interesting one.  The change to a darker, flatter color began with the 1990 version of the Santa Fe AAs. We have chronicled the reasons the changes happened several times in O Gauge Railroading. The latest instance occurred with the Conventional Classics Santa Fe F-3s that used Post War style tooling.  The original red color was so dark and "dusty" compared to the original Post War finish that Lionel offered replacement shells with brighter and shinier red colors to those that requested them.

Sadly, these replacemnt shells are no longer available from Lionel.

Ed Boyle

I used my set of replacement shells on a set of 2353 guts, and left the CC units alone. Too bad Lionel has never made the B Units for either the NYCS or AT&SF CC sets.  After many requests to get 'em done, we were told to go jump in the lake !  Thanks, Lionel.

The scale and traditional F-3s are essentially the same length at about 13 inches. The scale ones seem be a little chunkier in appearance, but as Lee indicates, for the most part, the traditional F-3s running on a layout in most cases won't really be distinguishable from the scale versions as far as size.

There is a difference in detail, of course, but if you're standing several feet away or more and watching engines running, it's actually pretty hard for many folks to tell a whole lot of difference (also true with scale vs. traditional Lionel Geeps, which are also pretty much scale sized).

Thanks for the responses.  Looks like I can proceed and have both on my layout.  Man, this forum is neat!

The detail just blurs to nothing important when they are moving.  Another different is the sound.  Both just the toy-train sound - older locos with their growling Pullmor motors and the occasional flash of electric blue through the windows versus newer locos humming along quietly, and of course the cool diesel sounds of the synthesizers in the newest ones.  I like 'em all, but they are different.  Running them at the same time can be bizarre, but fun.