I’ve noticed that on some older steam and diesel engines, they have a letter beside the roadnumber in the numberboards. (Santa Fe 36C, UP X4000, Milwaukee 14A,…) What was the point in doing this?
I may be totally wrong but I think I heard some of this somewhere. I think X means number like X3985 is on the UP Challenger number board. 14A would mean that it is an A unit like an F3A or F7A rather than the cabless B units. I’m not sure what the C stands for.
I’m not sure about steam. When F units were first sold, they came coupled with drawbars, instead of couplers. Some roads gave the entire consist one road number. The letters were used to identify each unit within the consist.
Nick
X in the number board is for “extra.” Some railroads would use the locomotive number boards to identify the train’s designation in time table/train orders. X3985 would be Extra 3985 (direction). A regular (time table schedule) train would have it’s train number, say Number 59 would be displayed as 59. If the train ran in sections, it would be 1-59, 2-59 etc.
Some steam engines had seperate train indicator number boards in addition to the engine number boards.
Jeff