Readers of this blog will recall that I am collecting Santa Fe F-7a locomotives in every common model railroading scale, in order to help visitors to Whistlestop understand the sometimes very confusing subject of Gauge and Scale in model railroads. Having found a very nice S scale example recently, the last remaining one required to complete the collection is an O gauge loco. Lionel made one a few years ago, and it would be very suitable, but is very hard to find. Voila, in MTH's new 2012 vol 2 catalogue there is a Santa Fe F-7 A-B-A set available with all the bells and whistles (literally), and this has been duly ordered!!
Here's a picture from the catalogue, albeit a bit small! Admittedly an A-B-A set is overkill, just an A (one with a driver's cab) would've been fine, but this will be a very nice set to have. So, barring someone inventing a new, popular, model railroading scale, when this one arrives later in the year I will have one of these locos in every scale- Z, N, TT, HO, S, O, 1 and G. There is a new size available in Japan- T scale- but extremely limited at this stage. Not sure if it'll catch on or not, but if they ever produce an F-7 the search will be on again!
