In the following link, there is what appears to be a red, white and blue E unit on the third train to the right. This train is said to be the City of San Francisco and would likely have three E units for power, not counting the single unit nosed against the others.
I’ve seen many pictures of “Buy War Bonds” cars and cabooses from the WW II era, but never a passenger locomotive, although an E type B unit would make a perfect rolling billboard. So my question is this: am I seeing a “War Bonds” unit or something else?
If anyone has not seen Shorpy’s before, IMHO is is darn interesting and worth your time to peruse all the photos.
First, it ain’t 1942 but more like 1952 or even later. If you go into the discussion on Shorpy’s the date discussed is 1958, And further in thier discussion is a black and white of a war bond diesel unit but can’t tell if it is an A or B unit or anything else, for that matter. The discussion notes some other stories about units over the years. Second, I will venture a guess that what is seen is either a Frisco or Katy unit in UP service. But I didn’t have time to delve much further into the Shorpy’s posts.
There is another photo on Shorpy of the same scene. See http://www.shorpy.com/node/2252 . Jack Delano kept good notes for all his photos for the Office of War Information, his notebooks are in the Library of Congress. I note from a cursory view of Delano’s photos online that he was in Chicago from December 1942 to February 1943. His trip west on the Santa Fe was in March 1943 and then he went back to Chicago.
There was indeed a single B unit assigned to City service that wore war bond colors. I’ve never seen evidence of any A units being so painted. If you can locate a copy of Union Pacific steam power they have a good 3/4 shot of the B unit in the diesel review section. I suspect the A unit mentioned is Union Pacific E9A 9051 which wore red, white and blue while serving on the Preamble Express in 1974/75.
Thank you for the photo. I’ve never seen the UP book mentioned above and I thought I looked thru all of Shorpy’s railroad phots. I sure did not notice the other photo of the more side view at 40th St…
