Review

by John Sipple

Life-Like Products has brought the knowledge and know-how used to produce their HO-scale Eries into the realm of N-scale. The result is a choice of powered A-dummy B sets or powered A-units only. Road names available are: Santa Fe (red and silver Warbonnet), Chicago & North Western (green, yellow, black), Milwaukee Road (orange, maroon, gray), New York Central (lightning stripe), Pennsylvania (single stripe green), Kansas City Southern, Union Pacific, and an undecorated version.

Prototype

It was a wonderful time. World War II was over, and we had won. By December 1945, locomotive manufacturers were starting to roll out locomotives which had only been drawings five months earlier when the Japanese surrendered. Railroads wanted the diesels but hadn't been able to get them during the war. With profits from the war and worn out locomotives, the railroads went on a shopping spree, and Fairbanks-Morse jumped on board.

F-M's claim to fame was its Opposed-Piston (OP) diesel engine. Imagine a dog with two heads; now imagine a diesel engine with a crankshaft top and bottom but no heads. The crankshafts were geared together such that the piston at either end of a cylinder pushed together and came apart just at the right time. One of their best engines had ten cylinders - and twenty pistons! It developed 2000 horsepower and could be very smooth and quiet. The engine had been used in submarines and surface ships during the war, and it seemed to be a perfect product for powering locomotives. Though it was used in a few applications before the war, F-M hit the ground running right after hostilities ceased, coming to market with switchers and an interesting line of passenger pullers.

Following the lead of other builders, F-M produced both four axle and six axle cowl-bodied units. They came to market with their six-axle A-1-A trucked version of EMD's successful E series about six months ahead of Alco's PA. Built in Erie, Pennsylvania, these units came to be known as "Erie-Builts" or simply "Eries," offering both an A and B unit. Original purchasers were ATSF, C&NW, KCS, Milwaukee, NYC, Pennsy, and UP Often purchased in A-B-A sets, 82 A-units were produced compared to 29 B-units. The locomotives had a distinctive "boat nose" which distinguished them from anything else on the market.

Eries ran on General Steel Castings trucks, like those under Alco PAs, but a nearly equal number rode on an unusual fabricated truck which was unique to the Eries. The units had large radiator intake grilles over the rear truck, exhausted on the roof by two large fans. They had two different windshields during their run, an early rectangular version and the later rounded style. In all, they represented a clean, uncluttered design which enhanced their image of elegance.

By 1949, F-M wrapped up production of the Eries, so-named because they were built in GE's Erie Plant. F-M moved its production to Beloit, Wisconsin and turned to building road switchers and their four-axle "covered wagons," the CFA and CFB also known as "C-Liners." Unfortunately, the engines which had proved so reliable at sea didn't do well when subjected to the pounding of the rails. Electrical problems plagued their products and by 1960, Fairbanks-Morse retired from the business of making locomotives.

The Model

What Fairbanks-Morse left behind was a design idea that makes a wonderful model. If the motive power section of the railroads hated them, the advertising departments loved them. Children and grown-ups lined up to see them pull into the station. They were, in fact, the shortest of the several cowl-bodied A-1-A trucked passenger diesels at 64 feet 10 inches. Alco's PA was slightly longer at 65 feet 10 inches while the EMD E7s were 71 feet 1-1/4 inches long. Baldwin's "Shark-Noses" ran out to an astounding 80 feet!

That shortness makes the Eries perfect for model railroading. Without foreshortening it, an Erie model is already more capable of running tight curves. Our review sample is painted up in New York Central's "Lightning" scheme. I have come to expect great things from Life-Like's paint shop, and I wasn't disappointed. Collectors are going to love this one! Lettering on the side is sharp and clear, even under magnification. The road number is displayed in the number board. Windows are appropriately glazed, and the molded windshield wipers have been painted so well you have to look very close to know that they are not a separate piece. I checked the measurements against Model Railroader Cyclopedia Volume 2: Diesel Locomotives and found the number to be agreeable, which explains why the locomotive looks so well-scaled.

The silver-painted trucks are the General Steel version. Sitting on these trucks, the locomotive has tremendous appeal, thanks in large part to the careful recreation of the boat nose and cab window details. Created when there was a huge emphasis on design, the Eries led the way in many respects, and the model captures it perfectly. It still is a diesel-powered machine with doors and fans and vents, but as on the prototype, these have been conformed to the curves of the shell. The dual roof fans with their grilles curved to match the roof are just one example.

Performance

Thanks to Life-Like's successful splitframe design with a five pole motor and dual flywheels, this is a very smooth operator. There is a minimum of gear noise, even at high speeds. The center axle in each truck, like the prototype, is unpowered, but it does have flanges. Life-Like has worked very hard to come up with a six-axle design which tracks well through small-radius curves.

One interesting oddity about this model is the disparate couplers fore and aft. While the back sports the Life Like-standard Rapido, the front wears a knuckle dummy. This dummy will couple reluctantly with Micro-Trains couplers and other knuckles. The import of this is that you can buy a pair of these Eries, couple them back-to-back with their Rapidos, and pull cars with modern coupler designs. Interesting. The rear coupler could be easily changed out to a magnetic knuckle coupler.

The headlight is quite bright without being a white LED, but it is not directional. The headlamp is lit all the time, and when you look inside, you see why. There is no power board with diodes for directional lighting. In fact, there is no place for the power board (or a DCC decoder, for that matter) inside. There is a slight depression in the split zinc-alloy chassis up under the radiator roof grilles; with some grinder work, a decoder might be able to be shoe-horned into there.

Summary

This is a good running, good-looking model of a Fairbanks-Morse Erie. All twelve wheels pick up current, making it fairly immune from dirty track and dead frogs. It's just the loco to putt a late-forties to late-fifties streamline passenger train. While it isn't an easy conversion to DCC, those who are good at such things should rise to the challenge. We've observed the recent HO releases from Life Like which are all ready to receive a decoder and hope this thinking will invade their N-Scale loco line.

Meanwhile, this is a pretty fine Variable Voltage Control model; I intend to enjoy it thoroughly.