Are there any active roads/shortlines or non-museum railroads that use a few old F units? The only one I know of is the Metro North FL9s (or are they retired now)?
Yes, matter of fact there are.
Canadian Pacific has 1 FP7, 3 FP9s and 1 F9B.
Kansas City Southern has 3 FP9s and 1 F9B
Norfolk Southern has 2 F9PHs and 2 F7Bs.
Additionally, both Union Pacific and Canadian National have E units on their roster.
I’ll let you research the regionals and short lines yourself. Follow this link to The Diesel Shop:
Peoria & Western has a pair of ex-CN FP9’s that regularly work in local freight service.
Virginia Railway Express has six F40 units (if that’s what you mean). Three are owned and three are leased. The owned units are for sale. All are to be replaced with new units within 24 months.
The Metro North’s retired FL-9, the ones paid for by the State of Connecticut, have retired to Tourist Train duty and are considered CONNDOT reserve. The Nagatuck Railroad is operated by the Railroad Museum of New England, both Tourist Trains and light freight. www.rmne.org
As for the F40PH, many, many are still in service across America. Boston’s MBTA has 45 F40PH locomotive in a continuing rebuilding program.
The Fillmore & Western has two F7s in service.
That’s the western Fillmore & Western with the F’s. The eastern Fillmore & Western, the common carrier one, has two lonely ex-ATSF GP-20’s in Nebraska.
Michigan Air Line in Walled Lake uses an F7 in regular dinner train and freight service. Laid up with a mechanical issue at the moment. They have a few others on a dead line that need some work, maybe someday.
See ya
Larry
Maine Eastern runs a couple of very pretty FL9’s.
My apologies. The F40s are clearly not the units you’re looking for.
What about the famous warbonets schemes?
None on F’s that are still in service.
The Washington & Idaho Railroad that runs between Marshall, WA (near Spokane) and Wilson, WA (just across the state line from Moscow, ID) has two ex-CN FP-9’s in its Marshall yard, one painted in the Southern Pacific’s “black widow” scheme and the other in a more conservative grey and black scheme. These two are owned by a private individual, who allows the W&I, in exchange for free storage of the units, to use them as needed on their freight trains. I’m not sure the grey one has ever gone out on a revenue trip, but the SP look-alike gets plenty of use.
If you want more information, the W&I F-units are frequent topics of discussion on the Altamont Press discussion board. W&I owner Stan Patterson sometimes answers questions on that list to help railfans know when & where they can see the trains in action. You can also check out a couple videos on YouTube of the F in service. Here’s a couple examples (the first one is mine):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmaKhr2ULJk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_nJAxe-Ylc
Hope this helps,
Tom
Carolina Southern, running out of Chadbourn, North Carolina.
Bill
I have an original chicken wire F-3 … does that count ? Its number is BAR 502
R.J. Corman Railroad Company has a pair of FP-9s they use on their My Old Kentucky Dinner Train.
Tom
Gettysburg and Northern in Pennsylvania have 5 on it’s roster - 2 F7A - 2 FP9 - 1 F9B.
I have photographed the FP9 1751 in Algoma Central colors in revenue service in the last year or two. The rest I have never seen.
WARBONNET! You said the magic word! The California State Railroad Museum (in Old Sacramento) has a Santa Fe F7A/F3B set restored, in its backshops. The unit (now 347c) had work the warbonnet scheme, then the yellowbonnet scheme, and was subsequently restored back to its original warbonnet scheme as the demo locomotive when Santa Fe (and its other half haha) took to their roots and started using the red & silver scheme for their freight units, this was a few years ago. The locos are not on display currently. There’s also a nicely running Western Pacific F cab there! Saw it run last month.
Recently I saw am E or F unit in Crivitz, Wis. on the Escanaba and Lake Superior. It may have come from Wisconsin and Southern judging from the paint scheme.
The Seminole Gulf RR in southwest Florida has at least one that they use to power their dinner train. Seminole Gulf is a regional line made of 118 miles of trackage from CSX (nee ACL & SCL) back in the 1980’s and is a working freight railroad.
Seminole Gulf Railway owns and operates over 100 miles of track in Florida from a connection with the national rail system at Arcadia between North Naples and between Oneco (Bradenton) and Sarasota. Seminole Gulf is the only freight railroad in Southwest Florida, hauling much of the region’s building materials, newsprint, LP gas, plastics, sugar, stone, recycled materials, steel, and other commodities.