Just picked up a couple of used E units because of the nose I don’t have [no boxes with the units]. From Wikipedia I am given to understand that only early E7s had this slant nose. Is this correct?
Cisco,
If I remember correctly, that is an E-6 unit. The E-7 nose didn’t have quite as much slope.
Don Z.
E7’s had bulldog noses like the FT’s and later.
It was the E3’s thru E6’s that had noses like the above.
Andre
The diesel looks like a Alco DL-109 which probably had the most sloped nose of all the diesel engines, and the DL-109 was also lengthy similar to an EMD E7 passenger engine…
The DL-109 is an ALCo model, this an EMD model. It rides on EMD trucks, and the cowl and nose are clearly EMD. The unit is CNW, not GMO. CNW only had 1 DL-109 #5007A, this is numbered 5006A.
Thanks, gentlemen. That is good news because my other Es are all either 7,8,or 9s. I’m glad to have some E6s for representation of CNW history on the layout.
And thanks for the link, tgindy. I wasn’t aware of that Alco model. Good to learn something today.
The true shovel noses were not E units at all. They were Burlington’s stainless steel streamliners of the mid to late 1930’s such as the Pioneer Zephyr. Here’s a link to SIlver Charger, the last shovel nose. Burlington followed up with the E5 which was not a shovel nose. Its nose angle was like E3’s and E6’s.
Here is a link showing Silver Charger… http://quickpicbooks.homestead.com/files/cbqzephyrbook.htm
Here is Wikipedia’s write-up of the Pioneer Zephyr. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Zephyr
Yeah, now you see, that is a really cool story. I did know about the Zephyr. That record-setting cross country dash is quite a story when one considers how many things could have gone wrong in those many hours of the dash from Denver to Chicago.
BTW, I just learned that the models of CNW E6s I have acquired are the only two E6s the CNW owned.
One of my earliest railroad memories is of a slant nosed E unit stopped at the depot in South Milwaukee Wisconsin. Since passenger service to SM ended in the mid to late 1950s, what I saw might have been an E3 or E6 (almost identical looking units) which by then would have been long since bumped from the 400 and other high priority trains. And I must have been not much older than 4 or 5 years old. I think the slant nosed CNW units were off the roster by the late 1950s.
The terminology I have seen most frequently – and of course all of this is railfan terminology, not official EMD or railroad vocabularly — is that the E7, E8, and E9 had the “bulldog” nose that they shared with EMD F units.
The E3 through E6s (and don’t forget the TA) were often called “slant nosed” although I have also seen “shovel nosed” to refer to them. The CB&Q shovel nosed units referred to above were unique items, generally given names – they were separate units with couplers at the end, but styled rather like the famous Pioneer Zephyr and similarly in stainless steel to match their trains, although you see photos of them hauling the old fashioned passenger cars too.
There was also the “bulbous nosed” (or pug nosed) EMD E2 that powered the City of San Francisco.
Some of the Baldwin streamlined cabs were given names such as “baby faced” (which somehow brings to mind comedian Flip Wilson’s classic routine about the “ugly baby” on the train).
What I cannot recall is if any particular name was given to the slightly streamlined flat front ends of the EMD or EMC locomotives that Santa Fe, Rock Island, I think B&O and perhaps a few other railroads had, that looked like a B unit had been given a cab with a slightly angled face down to the tracks.
So here is a challenge to some of the styrene geniuses on this Forum -
This is the EA but w/ the creased (freight) pilot
