Hello everyone. The Niagara Railway Museum Inc. recently acquired the cab from CN F7Au #9173. It is fairly complete, missing 1 window, 2 door and 2 interior side panels, and parts of the control stand. Anyone able to ID what might be missing in the pic? (other than 3/4 of the locomotive, thanks, we are aware that most of it is not there, you don't need to tell me that!!)

Any info is helpful.

Ken
Niagara Railway Museum Inc.
http://www.nfrm.ca

what I never saw is the wing towbar thingy on the side, is that originally built into the unit and standard on the F?

or perhaps thats a lift bar...

whats the backstory on this? in a wreck?

be a nifty display, maybe control a model railroad or a virtual train simulator in the window, setup the controls for it.

From the CN Lines Historical Assn. website:

In looking at some photos of various CN Units, I think those lifting eyes on the sides of the cab were standard, but they were covered by a door (which is now gone).

The Toronto Railway Museum has another disembodied CNR F7 Cab (from 9159) that it is turning into a train simulator.

To further stimulate the conversation, here is a photo I found of another CNR F7 9169 (a whole unit this time) at the Prince George Railway Museum.

http://pgrfm.bc.ca/contact

I notice that 9173 is missing the speedometer, part of whatever that box next to it is, and some kind of box to the left of the control stand.

That's pretty cool !!!! Your cab is kinda rough looking, dusty, rusty, and cob web covered. BUT, you have all the needles in all the gauges !!!! GOOD SAVE. You could totally make a simulator, or set up a righteous control stand for a model train display, or combine those two features.

OK, I guess you know most of the pilot isn't there anymore, so I won't mention it. I figure you probably have some brake handles and a reversor stashed somewhere. As far as the interior goes, you need a BARCO speed recorder. I will make a GUESS that the gizmo next to the control stand with a gauge and two little red and green pilot lights is most likely some kind of trainline flowmeter, it most likely glows green when your train is fully charged, and red when you're sending air back. Another possibility is green for released and red for set/emergency, I don't rightly know how they do things in Canada. Another idea is to hook up a steam source to the cab heating coils.

Also I don't know if you want to restore the crapper and really recreate the F unit experience, but if you can post a foto from inside the nose, maybe I can give you an idea of what's missing besides the smell.

It looks like you have the electrical cabinet, too. You have a choice whether to enter from the side by climbing a ladder, or perhaps to set up handicap access through the engineroom door !!! Pretty cool, I was right the first time I said it. Of course you will have to have working alarm bell, isolation switch, PCS light ground relay, breakers for all the lights... can you post a foto of the back wall ???

Oh yea, you need a handle so you can honk the horn.

And BEST OF LUCK.

I see also a piece of conduit sticking up through the floor next to the control stand, with a piece of amputated wiring harness protruding from it. In the more complete F unit cab, this was evidently for the Fuel pump/generator field/control switches, and it has a plunger on top which must be a bell ringer. Your F unit cab may have had the same set up.

OH, and you don't need a steam source for the heaters. I better hurry up and correct myself before the feeding frenzy starts !!! The cab heaters work off hot water from the diesel engine cooling system. You could just use your regular old water heater....

And the SEATS are lovely, too, nice original naugahide (however it's spelled). Better recover them, but you have the perfect example to follow for cab carpentry practice, and a perfect material sample to match, and perfect patterns for each seat. Obviously the doors were kept shut all the time --- maybe this was a shelter for sportsmen or ski patrol ??? For some odd reason it was never trashed.

Also: Horns and horn valve and cords.

The brake pipe airflow meter is what's missing it's cover.

The contraption on the control stand with little brass pipe fittings on the back is the horn valve, just needs a HONKER. Of course, to put her back to STOCK, you'd do away with that and go back to a proper locomotive whistle pull chain, as you suggest. The flowmeter isn't original, either, but I bet a BASRCO recorder was.

The cool thing about the simulator idea is that this is a manual transition control stand, you could actually make it so the simulated engineman had to make transition from series to series parrallel, then to full parrallel, etc...

AND, if you want to go back to STOCK, well, then you must have LEATHER upholstry !!! An F unit cab was like a steam heated limo with no steering wheel....

Looking at the pic Joe posted it is obvious the speedo is missing, and I already knew the cover was missing off the flow meter. The horn valve is in fact there, but is missing the handle. The amputated wires at the side of the control stand I agree are from the fuel pump, control, lights, etc. but looks like pretty much everything else is there. The lifting lugs are hidden by a cover, and we have one of them. The interior panels are missing where the windows roll down in both the doors and main windows. It needs a good cleaning and painting, which isn't a big deal. I already have a couple of members just itching to get at it. It was an item that was on the verge of being scrapped, and I felt that since we are in a shop where many of these units were maintained, we should at least have part of one. You get what you can get. Yes it's just a cab, but it's fairly complete, and will be a great display.

maybe you could put a power truck under it, run it on batteries, and turn a lot of heads...

The Guys at the Toronto Railway museum propped their F7 Cab on a spare truck off of either an ALCO or Baldwin Switcher.

Funny, they were just talking about how they had gotten an old-time Hobart Welder up and running again...