Pasadena 1946. The fireman is about to cut the helper off. This one and the previous one are by Stan Kistler.
In the thirties, the Santa Fe converted four of its oldest pacifics into prairies, complete with outside-bearing trucks front and rear.
What was the purpose of removing one of the unit's front axle ? Increasing its adhesive weight on drivers ? Dom
Tractive effort, I imagine. Maybe not weight on drivers so much, they being branch line engines already by then. But they originally had 79" drivers. To get them down to 69" the front and rear trucks had to be replaced anyway. Maybe something about the design of their front trucks made it difficult to slam them five inches a make lowriders out of them. In any case, whatever they were after, they didn't get enough of it. There were 26 in the class, and only four got treated this way.
A former baggage car converted for weed killing service. The "cut-outs" on each side at the "cab" end for the extension weed killer spray booms. Dwight Wedel photo in McPherson, Kansas, 1987.
While the accident itself is wild. I do know that the Navy has landing strips around their bases for pilots to learn how to land on aircraft carriers without having to deal with pitching and rolling decks before they have mastered the basics on solid land. Whitehouse field outside Jacksonville is one such carrier 'practice' field, adjacent to NAS Jacksonville.
At the Dearborn Station Annex in Chicago, the first PA-PB-PA set delivered to the Santa Fe, poses in October of 1946. Not long after the photo was taken it would be heading west on the point of the Fast Mail. The locomotives were not painted in the Warbonnet paint scheme until shortly before delivery because the scheme was patented in 1937 by General Motor's "Art and Color Section" and needed permission from GM. However, because Santa few was a huge customer of GM already, that was not a real issue and formal permission was obtained to paint the Alcos. Previous DL-109 set #50 had to be approved as well before paint was applied.
True. Knickerbocker was the designer's name and he worked for GM. I've seen a very early pic of number 50, the DL-109 or DL-107 or whatever it was, and it had subtle differences. For example, the whole herald was yellow, even the four corners. It had the cross outlined in black, but not the four red wedges. Number 51L and C above were also the very first PAs, and 51A the first PB-1. Their builder numbers were 75,000-75,002. EMC may have designed the paint, but ALCo really wanted to show off its new model in that scheme. 50 looked a little odd after getting a Mars light, too. Yes, it also said SANTA FE on the other side.
Preston George, 1947, the Grand Canyon. The green flags indicated a second section was following, so he waited for it. In my mind, Train 23 was the poster child for the transition era. '47 was the year the ATSF announced that their transcontinental line passenger service was officially dieselized, but when 23 or 24 ran heavy...
