It has been a while since this thread was active.
I just purchased a new to me Scale Lionel Santa Fe f3 set #16. When looking at many of the newer models, these f units still look pretty nice. After seeing in person, the cab is ridiculous on these. I happen to come across this thread and decided to make changes.
Making things worse, is the number 16 F3’s have the cab lights and number boards way to bright making the red cab thing even worse.
I rewired the number boards and cab lights to be in series so they would dim down and reduce the heat ( I have heard of the number boards melting on this model with extended use). I realize the cab light should probably be off, but I still like them on to see inside.
I did a simple repaint job to take the interior from red to grey. I used a rattle can instead of an airbrush, so the paint is too much in areas around the controls. Even with the sub par paint job, I think this an huge improvement.
The cool white LEDs for the headlight were also really bothering me. I replaced them all with warm white ones. Comparisons below between the power unit which I updated and the dummy unit which is original. I thought posting this might inspire others to make these simple changes as well.
Next project is to do something about the coupler gap.
Mike
