#110 was often one cab unit and one Harriman sub. I rode #110 regullarly, as often we had early morning water polo or baseball practice. I remember the the cab's appearance as being different from EMDs or ALCos. I distinctly remember the FM buider's plates. They were both in bloody nose, I do not remember the numbers, but I do remember that the paint scheme on one was in really bad (even for the SP) shape. When I was riding the SP to school in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the main commuter power were the FM Trainmasters. There were also SD-7s and SD-9s, torpedo boat GP-9s and GP-9s with dB and s/g. E-units also made occasional appearances. But there were these mystery FM cabs that I remember , I just can not igure out what they were. The SP would pack most of the Trainmasters off to Oakland on the weekends to work to Sparks, Nevada and back. It was then that you often saw the diverse power on the Peninsula trains, but sometimes you would see it on the off-peak trains. The most interesting consists of the Peninsula trains were the Coast Mail, also known as Sad Sam, and the DelMonte. The former had all sorts of cars and usually E-units or PAs as power, but passenger F-units also appeared. The DelMonte would often have a pair of torpedo boat GP-9s, three or four LWs (baggage, maybe, two coaches and a club car) painted in the SP silver scheme followed by bi-Levels and Harriman subs. I like to run a DelMonte on N-trak because it does get stares and questions. I also like to run my C-C black GS-4 and bi-Levels, as that gets the Scale Rule Richards going. These rivet counters are shocked when I pull out a book that has photographs of bi-Levels behind steam on the SP. What I think is really funny is that the VRE has or has had two types of cars that I rode in other places. They had the Boise Budds, which were ruined B&M RDCs that were rebuilt to commuter coaches and they also have or have had some SP bi-Levels.
Until 1971, with the coming of AMTRAK, Southern Pacific's DelMonte was the oldest named train in the United States. AMTRAK did not continue the DelMonte when it took over in May, 1971 (See the Sir Douglas Quintet tune: RAILPAX KILLED THE DELMONTE). The SP had wanted to discontinue it, but it had sufficient ridership, particullarly on the weekend, that the SP knew better than to try to ask the California Public Utilities Commission for permission to discontinue it. Many of the well-to-do of Monterey used to get on Friday morning in Monterey for a weekend trip to San Francisco. They usually sat in the club car. It arrived in San Jose late in the morning, where it had a brief layover before continuing to SF. In San Jose, the SP attatched a commuter consist to it to handle local passengers between SJo and SF. I frequently rode it the other way. When it left SF, it had the three or four silver cars and the commuter consist: Harriman subs and the bi-Levels. In SJo, the SP would cut out the commuter part of the consist and the remaining three or four silver cars would continue to Monterey
A bit of history here... GM's Electro-Motive Division (EMD) dominated the diesel-electric locomotive industry so totally in the 1960s and 1970s that it was nearly impossible to imagine them losing market share, let alone market leadership. Seemingly out of nowhere, GE - which had been a very minor player, at best (albeit one with a long history of industry involvement) - developed a series of highly efficient, powerful locomotives that, by (I think) the mid-1990s, took over the #1 position in diesel-electric sales -- and they've kept it ever since. If you can imagine Microsoft being displaced within a few years by an unknown upstart, youll pretty much have the idea. (It's interesting to note that EMD, like Microsoft, was accused of unfair business practices due to its erstwhile market dominance. The accusations were officially investigated and determined to be unfounded.) So the choice among diesels isn't just a matter of eras (although of course that's important). I think a certain number of roads clung to EMD during its decline, perhaps because they were familiar with servicing the units and dealing with EMD; at the same time, more innovative roads increasingly turned to GE, which offered -- in addition to better efficiency -- advanced alternating current technology that went beyond the century-old direct-current traction philosophy embodied in EMD's designs. I'm sure more knowledgeable railfans can correct the details of this picture, but I'm pretty sure it's correct, overall. Arguably, we're now in a third generation of diesel-electric locomotive technology and, as in the transition from steam to diesel, there were some important -- and interesting -- differences in how roads made the transition from the second to the third generation. So the choice of diesels -- specifically, between recent EMD and GE diesels -- plays into the broader picture you're trying to convey in your model railroad of how eagerly (or sluggishly) your road is responding to new technology.
