These engines were only in the paint shop long enough to slather some paint over the former owners markings, get a new number and "MKT" on the side. The blue one is an ex Conrail, the orange and whites are ex Illinois-Central-Gulf and the yellow one I have no idea. Maybe Chicago Northwestern?
MKT business must have been booming? Very short of power? That yellow one has me wondering of it's origins. I don't see obvious evidence of C&NW. No lights or bell in the low nose. The color almost has me thinking of some similar appearing ex-Weyerhaeuser units that were once in Washington state. (Chehalis Western.) Boxcab E50
A quick bit of web-searching suggests it's an ex Kennecott Copper GP39-2, which used to have a high cab on it (I thought that one looked a little odd...)
Yeah good find. I looked in one of my books (why didn't I think of that) and found MKT numbers 380-388 were purchased from Kennecott Copper Co., in 1984. I guess they "Chopped" the cabs to lower them to standard level.
These tickled my fancy and I did some more web searching, check out these pics from the www.rr-fallenflags.org site ... http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/mkt/mkt382awp.jpg with a top down shot. The reason it looks odd is that the unit has ended up with a really strange roofline. From the front, you can tell them as normally the number board box meets the top corner of the roof, whereas on these there is a flat piece of roof, so either it's now a lower cab roof, or the angled bits are steeper? http://gelwood.railfan.net/mkt/mkt382abp.jpg shows it from the front. 380-388 all seem to have the odd cab, except for 383 which looks pretty normal apart from the "high clearance" fuel tank they also seem to have. http://gelwood.railfan.net/mkt/mkt383awp.jpg They'd make a fun unit to model...
Russ I figured since we were talking about these in another place, I'd show off one of the in-progress shots of 231's previous bretheren.
Good spotting, Martyn. The height of the fuel tank is a giveaway to their heritage as well. The cab certainly looks different to the normal EMD Spartan Cab.
If I remember correctly, they were very short of motive power about this time as they had purchased a portion of the defunct Rock Island, and named it the "OKT", as well as the additional traffic on their system from the Rock's shutdown, plus gaining trackage rights into Omaha/Council Bluffs and Lincoln plus others. I also remember seeing many leased CNW SD45s they were using, as well as some run-thru power from UP. Bill
Looking good. Gee, haze over the logo on the side with blue paint in an airbrush and patch over the numbers on the cab and it would be a Katy engine. But it sure looks a lot better the way it is in the photo.
Thanks Johnnie. Just wait till it gets its "grime bath." And while it won't be quite as faded as the Katy boat (which if I knew someone who wanted one would be a cool project to tackle), it'll still look like it belongs to the SP of the East.
Somewhere in this color cavalcade (seems to be heavy on grime & rust), there were several ex-Conrail GP40s still in Penn Central black. As for the ex-KCC GP39-2s, their cabs were rebuilt to a lower position, as were the high short hoods, before going to Katy. To my knowledge, none of them were painted green & yellow prior to the UP merger. I'll have to check several references to make sure.
Thanks to the startup of subsidiary Oklahoma, Kansas & Texas over the north-south Rock Island line in Oklahoma, plus trackage rights granted MKT from the UP-MP-WP merger, more motive power was needed. Those are great shots, Russ- I've seen these type of units from Vinita, OK down to Denison on my trips to and from my parents' home in Afton, since I drove along US69 from McAlester to Big Cabin.
Well you guys have your information right on these units. The Yellow units are ex Kennecott units and the cabs were lowered and this is why the cabs look strange.
Another good spotting feature is the fuel tank- there's more ground clearance on the tank, in deference to any rocks on the tracks in or near the mine. Since rocks weren't an issue on the Katy, it probably served to just skim over the occasional armadillo or skunk.......
While on a UP excursion a few years back over the old MKT line between Houston and Smithville we were running a little late getting back to Houston. I was standing in the vestibule of the first coach behind the concessions car with my head out the window taking in the fragrances of the evening air. You guessed it, we hit a skunk. Time for a quick trip into the Sherman Hill to buy something. Here is a shot of the power before they turned the train in Smithville.
