Were any of the Milwaukee FTA’s ever painted in the orange/black scheme? The few pics that I could find, they are in the earlier gray scheme.
Thanks in advance!
They did get repainted in the black/orange/maroon scheme, but I have never seen them in the solid orange/black scheme. The Milwaukee started trading them in on GP9’s in the mid 50’s before the simplified orange/black scheme started showing up on EMD F units & FM C-Liners. In most cases the FT’s became early ‘trade-bait’ as it was too expensive to upgrade them to F7/9 standards. EMD had some very sweet trade-in deals & financing that prompted the mass trade-in of these units. Some of the early FT’s had 567U or V block engines, and later ones had the 567A engines. The ‘A’ models could be upgraded with ‘AC’ conversion kits, but the electrical system really was not easy to upgrade(complete replace of the main generator to use the full 1500 hp, for example). The Milwaukee did do some upgrading on FT’s like box numberboards, but not too much else was done before they were traded in on the GP9’s.
Jim
Jim - Thanks so much for the info! That tells me exactly what I needed.