Does anyone make a Southern Pacific EMD F series locomotives A&B

yellow_cad Jan 18, 2019

  1. VinceP

    VinceP TrainBoard Member

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    Good source for EsPee pics

    rr-fallenflags.org.

    Or

    MyEspeeModeler
    Both have great older pics

    Including the Cotton Belt fp7 daylight and gp7 daylight with yellow railings.

    As for conversation have no idea why it's off tried to open it but it won't open.

    Any mods care to open my condo section please
     
  2. ogre427

    ogre427 TrainBoard Member

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    Here is a photo of a Kato F3a factory paint bodyshell out of my parts bin. They were once fairly plentiful, I bought this one for a spare drive.


    unnamed (7).jpg
     
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  3. Onizukachan

    Onizukachan TrainBoard Supporter

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    If you wanted to pull the Coast Daylight In 55-56, you’d want black widow F7s, BLI has them, I’m happy with my Kato f3a.
    If you are looking for DC, not DCC, the older ones are all over ebay at reasonable pricing.
    Finding the dcc ready versions is harder.
     
  4. SF Chief

    SF Chief TrainBoard Member

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    Very common (most common?) power on the SP's SF-LA coastal route in the immediate aftermath of steam (1955-56) was the PA-E7B-PA combination, all in Daylight colors. Good looking combination. Rick
     
  5. Onizukachan

    Onizukachan TrainBoard Supporter

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    I could be wrong chief, but I always understood the E7a e7b PA mixed combo to be a 53-55 Shasta Daylight thing, because every photo I have seen of that combo was either leaving El Paso, or Shasta route based on scenery.
    I understood by the time the coast converted in 55, the PAs were on their way out Already as apparently SP didn’t like them!
    LA only got the last 3-4 PA2 SP ordered in 53-54 and since the Morning Daylight was still GS4, what were they used for? San J and the Lark is my guess, as we know they were on the SJ Daylight.

    By 57 they were all gone and the Shasta was running E7 and FP7s. In 54 Sp ordered E9s to dieselize the coast line. They had e7bs and if they had any of the remaining PAs they would have been the backwards one in the consist, but those would have been much more likely on San J. Than Coast which had far more E9 E7b combos and only 3? PA...
    I guess it depends on which route you are modelling and what year?
     
  6. SF Chief

    SF Chief TrainBoard Member

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    Hey Onizukachan,
    OK, I have sources in front of me ("SP Night Trains of the Coast Route", "PA: Alco's Glamour Girl", and SP Modeler website, which is quite good). So, my understanding is that:
    a) E7s were great on the flats, but lousy on the hills. When E7s were delivered to SP in 1947 two of the five A-B-B sets delivered were intended to be used on the Shasta Daylight, but failed at that job so PA/PBs took that route when the Shasta Daylight was inaugurated in 1949. E7s, by themselves, also had great difficulty on Santa Margarita hill on the Coast Route just north of San Luis Obispo.
    b) So by 1949, all the E7s were put in the LA Passenger Locomotive Pool, where they mostly operated on the flatter New Orleans-LA Sunset route or the Chicago-LA Golden State route. The LA pool was also the source of engines used on the Coast route, and E7s occasionally were used on the Lark, Coast Daylight and other streamliners, but the GS steamers remained the main power on the Coast until the route was formally dieselized in January 1955. In addition to the five A-B-B sets SP bought in 1947, its E-unit roster in 1949 was increased by the transfer to LA of an E2A and two E7Bs. These had been jointly owned by UP, SP and CNW and used on the Oakland-Chicago Overland Route. SP in 1949 also picked up an E8A, which had been an EMD demonstrator, to join the LA pool.
    c) PA/PBs, whatever their reliability issues, were much better on hills that E7s owing to their better traction motors. Southern Pacific could not have hated them too much, because they bought more than any other railroad--40 PAs and 13 PBs in several batches between 1948 and 1953. Because of their better performance on hills, the Alcos operated from SP's Oakland pool and were used on the mountainous Shasta Route and Overland Route through the Sierras.
    d) The last batch of Alcos, delivered to SP in 1953, included eight PAs and 2 PBs and went to the LA pool. Nine E9As delivered in 1954-55 also went to the LA pool. So, this group of six E7As (the E2A was modernized to E7 standards in 1953), 12 E7Bs, the lone E8, the nine E9s, the eight PAs and two PBs comprised the motive power available for use on the Coast route at the end of steam. The E8s and E9s were much better than E7s on hills, yet in 1955 were more frequently used on the Sunset and Golden State routes to the east, while the LA pool PAs ran mostly on the Coast route. Also, in the mid-1950s SP modified its diesels so they could be MU'd together in any combinations. When that happened, the two PBs in LA were moved up to the Oakland pool in 1955.
    e) So... a lot of PAs on the Coast route and a lot of E7Bs. Thus, a very typical combination in the 1955-56 period was PA-E7B-PA, all in Daylight. It might have been the most typical combination, but I can't prove that. A lot of photos attest to the common usage of the PA-E7B-PA combination on the Coast route. At first glance, you might be thinking it's PA-PB-PA pulling the Coast Daylight or Lark, but look closely and you'll invariably see an E7B. Of course, things soon became even more interesting, with the advent of F-units (and even Geeps!) in their Black Widow colors, the painting of two E9s in the BW scheme, various schemes of orange-black and orange-gray that evolved into the Bloody Nose scheme by 1958. Then it all got boring with Bloody Nose scheme on all the engines and Sunset scheme on all the cars of ever-shrinking SP passenger trains.
    f) Many, many photos attest to PAs being used on the Coast trains well into the 1960s. The first SP PAs were retired in 1962, the last in 1967. The E7s were retired during the same period, the first in 1962, the last in 1968.
    My two cents.
    Rick
     
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  7. Onizukachan

    Onizukachan TrainBoard Supporter

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    Fantastic write up Chief!
    Thank you!
    I had been looking at specific train consists in specific years (where avaialable) as well as film or photographic records and trying to piece things togethe with the help of the espee website. . Coming at it from the opposite direction, as it were.
    I think he, like me, is more focused on early to mid 50s, and the SP sure had a LOT of EMDs compared to the Alcos. I wonder if availability may play into how I was getting completely different conclusions than you.

    I thank you again for the excellent read and will include it in my purchasing decisions on which locos to buy... once I get enough cars to make a good CMW/CME, and another GS4 to pull it!
    As I read your point a and b, I am getting the impression that SP was hoping to start to do away with the helper locos at SLO, though they had to keep them for the GS4 anyway thru 55.

    I guess we’d need to know WHICH Daylight the OP wanted to model, and what year, to know what daylight painted locomotive he’d need!
     
  8. SF Chief

    SF Chief TrainBoard Member

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    Thanks Onizukachan. Agree, the types of locomotive(s), types of passenger cars, and paint jobs on each depend on what year and what route you are modeling--if you want to be prototypical. For what it's worth, my n-scale Coast Daylight is pulled by an E7A-B-B consist, which happened a fair amount in the late 1940s and early 1950s but was never a typical combination on the Coast Route when GS ruled the roost. Nor was it particularly successful. But it looks good and runs well--and it's MY railroad. Rick
     
  9. r_i_straw

    r_i_straw Mostly N Scale Staff Member

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    At least I can run Daylight PAs on my Sunset. ;)
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
     
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  10. SF Chief

    SF Chief TrainBoard Member

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    Yeah, but your Sunset is WAY prettier than the SP trains of the late 1960s. I've got nothing against the Bloody Nose scheme, but SP tended to strip the corrugation off most of their non-Budd cars and paint the flat panels with silver paint. Not a good look. Especially because SP had had such beautiful passenger trains only a few years before. And the competition ATSF and UP maintained top flight passenger equipment right up to Amtrak. Rick
     
  11. r_i_straw

    r_i_straw Mostly N Scale Staff Member

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    That was because of the "Pullman Rot" going on underneath the stainless corrugations. The Cor Ten steel underneath did not hold up well out of site out of mind due to rust. SP figured this out and just pulled all the stainless off. Santa Fe tried to periodically remove the corrugations on their Pullman and ACF cars, treat the rust and reapply the fluting. If you don't keep up with that program, the car goes downhill real quick. We have an old Super Chief lounge car at one of the museums that I volunteer at. If you just pound on the corrugations on the side, rust rains down underneath and out the bottom at the side sill.
    DSC_0036.jpg
     
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  12. Mike Madonna

    Mike Madonna TrainBoard Member

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    SF Chief, good sources and a decent "synopsis".
    Onizukachan, I model the Santa Margarita Sub. which includes the 16.6 mile grade (from SLO to Santa Margarita) known as Santa Margarita Hill or, better known as, Cuesta. My time frame is the Spring of 1953, so my Daylight trains (#98/99) are GS powered. This also includes the Lark and the Starlight. The CME/CMW ("Overnight") also was either GS or MT powered at this time. In the Summer of '53, E-7s would come up from LA on the Lark (#75) to San Luis, then return to LA later (#76). This would support what SF Chief mentioned about the E units and the grade West out of SLO.
    As for F units, on the Coast Line A-B-B-A was the usual lash up, That said, during my modeling period, SP had started to use A-B-A lash ups. These locos were F-7s. One last point about SLO; almost every train that went West out of SLO had a helper. Some exceptions would be a short local (or "turn") or the CMW if it was around 15 cars.
     
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  13. SF Chief

    SF Chief TrainBoard Member

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    Ah, that makes perfect sense, Mike. Trains would switch engines at SLO in the days of steam. Operating the E7s on the fairly flat LA-SLO route would play to their strengths, avoid their weakness and conform to pre-existing operating norms.

    Thankfully, we don't have to worry about that in N-scale. Would make our hobby would be even more expensive.
    Rick
     
  14. SF Chief

    SF Chief TrainBoard Member

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    The F-units going through SLO were only pulling freight in 1953, right? My understanding is that the F-units didn't pull passenger trains on the Coast route until after 1955. Rick
     
  15. Onizukachan

    Onizukachan TrainBoard Supporter

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    Sounds like we are doing the same timeframe then, mine is going to be summer of 53, so I can occasionally add a dalylight trailer’d TOC or two to the CMW. I need a 4453 for my CMW now... :)
    It also seems to be when motive power was kept close to home, so I won’t feel bad about haven a loco return the opposite way on a different train As at most I’d model Santa Barbara to just past Surf/ former Campe Cooke(Vandenberg) area. I like the trestle bridge there.
     
  16. Onizukachan

    Onizukachan TrainBoard Supporter

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    That was my understanding as well (except the CMW/CME of course) , but interested in the response as well.

    I’m going to have to take modeler’s license and substitute my F3s for the E7’s, as I can still find Kato F3s in BW paint relatively frequently :)
     
  17. Mike Madonna

    Mike Madonna TrainBoard Member

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    Rick, that is correct as for "freight" F Units pulling freight. F Units may have pulled a passenger train if they were FP-7s. Which, by the way, Intermountain did produce.

    As for F3s, by the early 1950s, most (if not all) were tranferred to Texas. The gearing was more suitable to that terrain. Not saying you can "not" run F-3s (it's your railroad), just trying to make you a little more "informed". Either way, the "Black Widow" scheme is still rather "striking" regardless!
     
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  18. Carl Sowell

    Carl Sowell TrainBoard Supporter

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    Mike,

    You are sure correct in saying the SP "Black Widow" scheme is rather striking. I also like the "Tiger Stripe" scheme, "Daylight' scheme and actually the "Bloody Nose" isn't too bad. Of course they had some cool paint jobs such as the Olympic ( 1985 ? ? ), the 3 Bi-centennial locos and the "Popsicle" scheme on the MK rebuilds ( 2 as I recall ) plus the Gold job that Atlas is putting out. They had some nice looking locos. If only the had washed them. However, there was one that I absolutely think they blew it on and that is the dreaded "Halloween" scheme they put on some PA's and F7's, very few fortunately.

    Regards,
    Carl
    Have Fun!
     
  19. JMaurer1

    JMaurer1 TrainBoard Member

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    Bloody nose was just primer coat waiting to be painted in black widow or tiger stripes...:LOL::ROFLMAO::sick:
     
  20. Tony Burzio

    Tony Burzio TrainBoard Supporter

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    The PA was a disaster for ALCO because of the awful motor. The DRGW hated them, and even at the end would send out a PA with an F Unit just in case the PA needed to be towed back to the barn.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALCO_244
     

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