CN F7Aum Blind Beetle

Starting in 1983 CN selected 9 units from their fleet of 1973-74 rebuilt F7Au for conversion into trailing "B" units.  They had their cab equipment, bells and horns stripped, windows and number boards painted over and new fuel tanks added to replace the smaller as delivered tanks. They also got a new paint job. 

They were known as blind beetles, Blind B's, beetles and a few other more colourful names in the railfan community.  Railfans also called them F7Aum to represent modified rebuilt F units. You can find out more about the CN rebuilt F unit fleet in CN Lines magazine Vol 20 No 1 and 2 that covered the prototype and modeling of the rebuilds.  

I decided I needed one of these units for my fleet and used a Highliners shell and a Stewart (now Bowser) F7A drive for the locomotive.  I used photos as a guide for detailing the model, and I scratchbuilt a fuel tank as well. There are plenty of fiddly bits on the pilot and rear of the car body that took some figuring out as well.

The locomotive was painted with TruColor CN red-orange, CN lettering grey for the stripes and black for the carbody.  I used Sean Steele decals (Now available from www.pdc.ca!) for the lettering along with some custom printed decals I had done by Precision Design Company (www.pdc.ca).

There is an upcoming magazine article with a lot more detail on how I did the model.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.



The filters behind the farr grill is one of my favourite details




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