El Cap ask:
Brakie, did you ever hear of any railroads running F’s backwards for long distances (50 miles) or more?
Only once…Wasn’t 50 miles tho’ it was 12…That was the local I was on.
I suppose some where in the annuals of railroading that could be a very good possibility.
Correction to horsepower ratings. The FT’s were 1350 hp each run in pairs with drawbar. Later the drawbar was removed and they had regular couplers on both ends. The F7’s were 1500 HP as were the GP7’s. They NEVER had drawbars between the F7A&B units just couplers. The F9’s and GP9 were 1750 hp each. Please check the Second Diesel Spotters Guide for detailed information on these units.
There is a photo on page 67 of Santa Fe Trackside with Bill Gibson of Santa Fe freight F7A #210C pulling a three car passenger train. This was the Denver-LaJunta #191 and of course one of the cars was a steam generator equipped baggage car. As Brakie said never say never. Santa Fe also had some steam generator cars built from steam locomotive tenders that could be and were used behind a single F cab unit.
There is a photo on page 23 of Joe McMillan’s Route of the Warbonnets of single Santa Fe passenger F7A used on the early Super C trailing a flat car and a caboose. Same book page 64 F7A #222C with a flat car and a caboose on the Sonora Branch in West Texas.
There is a photo in one of Joe Strapac’s Southern Pacific Motive Power Annuals of a single F unit trailing 79 empty boxcars up California’s very level central valley.
As I wrote on the earlier post Santa Fe used single FTA units equipped with footboards in switching and local service. See Valley Division Vignettes pages 132-133.
Ed
Thanks for the info Ed.
Right you are…I was thinking GP7 and used GP9 instead…[:O][:I]
It’s sometimessaid that there’s a prototype for everything.
There was a very small railroad, the Haysi, interchanging coal cars with the Clinchfield that had one locomotive, an F3 B unit, later upgraded to F7B standards.
Jeff Cornelius
FT’s were also “non-symetrical”, that is the distance from the coupler to the nearest truck center was different on the front and back of both the A and B unit (unless special ordered B units had equal spacing). After the FT units were pretty much symmetrical.
And the coupler to truck center distance can make a difference. The SP changed from F units to GP units on helpers out of Dunsmir and had some derailments they traced back to the GP’s having a longer distance between the coupler face and the truck centers than the F units.
In the late 1950’s, when I lived in Truckee, CA during the summers, there was a daily Sparks, NV, Colfax CA ‘turn’ which was powered by a single 'Black Widow" F unit on the SP Donner Pass line. The consist was usually about 4 or 5 cars, which made it look like an Athearn train set, LOL! The F unit was probably turned on the wye track at Colfax for the return trip.
It was kind of a refreshing change from all of the heavy freight that ran through Truckee at least once and hour.
Tom [:)]
I don’t think it’s so much a matter that “it couldn’t be used” or “was never used” so much as that it wasn’t really designed for that use. Ya some railroads did it at least for a while, but most that did found it didn’t work as well as a road switcher. Eventually I believe the ICC put in rules against using F’s as road switchers for safety reasons due to the poor backwards vision of the engineer. Of course, that sticks in my mind because I remember reading a story in I think Trains talking about how a particular railroad did occasionally use an F on a remote branchline, even though technically / legally they weren’t supposed to.
It’s kinda of a matter of what was most common. Were 0-6-0’s ever used in passenger service?? Yes, but that doesn’t mean an 0-6-0 is a passenger engine and would look right pulling a string of coaches on your model railroad. Similarly, yes F’s were indeed used singly on wayfreights and such (especially years back) but it was pretty rare.
It depends on the weight of the train how many cars one loco can pull, plus the consideration of grades on the route. One F-7 may pull one passenger car or several. These replaced steam locos and were treated the same.ie they were wyed or turned on a turntable
ARBY
There is a photo in the special issue,Fast Trains,of an early Super C behind one F7.The train consisted of one piggyback flat and caboose.I once saw a San Diegan consisting of one F7 and three cars.The B unit must have been set out en route due to a mechanical problem because the A units did not have steam generators.There is a prototype for everything!
Santa Fe did use FT cab units out of the Fresno Area (Calwa) for local service…L. Kramer’s Santa Fe Valley Division Vignettes shows several units equipped with foot boards and back-up lights. on p. 133 is a shot showing a single FT pulling some tank cars into Calwa from the Hanford refinery.
You might be thinking of Rock Island #750 & #751 … custombuilt by EMD … E6B units with one 1,000 hp engine and cab built into one end (somewhat as a gas-electric car) and baggage section at the other end. Reported to have had the baggage section “closed” and a second engine installed sometime during WWII. More details on p. EMD-123, "The Second Diesel Spotter’s Guide".
Rumors that the use of drawbars (not couplers) between A&B units of FT was due to a “union thing”, so the pair was-- technically – a single locomotive. Also explains the ATSF numbering scheme of XXA, XXB, XXC & XXL for a “single” locomotive.