Just got the Morning Sun "Santa Fe Facilities - Mainline" book by Stagner, put out by Morning Sun. They're on to something. What a great book. If you're looking to model the ATSF and want good color shots of all kinds of scene stuff, these are the books to get. Mostly 60's to 80's, but everything you would expect is in there and a few surprises as well. Lots of stations, but also fueling facilities, etc. I model Winslow-Darling-Flagstaff in 1972, and I got what I wanted.... -- Color shots the way I remember of Winslow, before the trees died in front of the depot....all the 'stuff' that is since cleaned-up. ---shots I'd never seen before of the Roundhouse at Winslow, even though they were from the 40's. --- the real kicker was a priceless shot from the month and year I model - of the Flagstaff depot, July 1972, with a westbound hotshot. Everything the way I remember, including the now-missing crossover in front of the station, dwarf signals... tan shingles on the depot, and 70's cars..all the detail in the shot just as I'd hoped. But the ULTIMATE payoff was the train - headed by #5616. That's my 'lead' Kato SD45 in my lashup.... Right year, month, day, and locomotive in a color book shot. Doesn't get much better than that!
I've found two captions that are wrong - one has a definite wrong date and the other at Raton identifies a high-nose RSD12 helper as an RSD15. Nothing awful, but yeah... But it's hard to beat those Morning Sun books for color reproduction. The world as we know it changed when these books became available. There's some 'factual' information that I'm wondering about. So, what is the actual end of LCL boxcar operations on ATSF? Early, mid, late '72, over the entire system, or in isolated chunks? In the Flagstaff old depot caption it says end of LCL was 1970, elsewhere it says December '72 in another station caption, was it phased out or shot dead..?
As I said, it's a great pair of books. However, according to volume two, SP crossed over the ATSF mainline at Vaughn on what is a highway bridge.
