I’ve just started out in modelling American outline in N gauge and have chosen the Santa Fe as my railroad as it is one of the easiest to get here in the UK. can someone give me a guide as to the livery carried on it’s locomotive and what time frame they are in? I have seen SF loco’s in blue/yellow and red/silver as well as black.
Did SF ever run high hood GP50’s as I have just got a Bachmann version (well it was cheap!) and can’t seem to find any reference on the net to the high hood in SF, with only Southern and Norfolk Southern running high hoods.
Psgr engines are easy! From the first EMD E units for the 1937 Super Chief they were in some form of the red and silver “Warbonnet” scheme. That scheme lasted up until (and beyond…like,still) the BNSF merger eventually being put on frt units.
Switchers were also fairly easy. Originally black w/ silver zebra stripes that went to blue bodies and solid yelllow ends w/ yellow stripes along the underframe and at the roof line.
Frt units get a little more complicated. The original Fts had a dark blue body w/ yellow trim but the yellow was a much more pale shade than that used on the psgr untis. F-3s (Santa Fe only had two 4 unit sets nos 200LABC and 201LABC) and early F-7s were delivered in this scheme but in the early 50s the frt scheme was changed to the same yellow as the psgr units w/ the same nose design. There was a brief transition period where the yellow along the sides at the floor and over the upper vents was omitted but it was soon restored. In the original Ft scheme the blue and yellow were seperated by a vermillion 2" stripe but that was soon cut back to just the nose and cab area of the A untits and was soon dropped entirely. All frt cab untis had black underbodies, pilots and roofs.
Frt hood units were also a little involved. Oroiginally they wer4e painted as the switchers in the black and silver Zebra stripe schem but in the latter deliveries of SD-24s and Alco “Aligators” the lettering was changed to the Huge “Santa Fe” that bacame standard on frt power. In the early 50s the Zrbra sucumbed to the yellow and blue, retaining the large Santa Fe in yellow.
At some point in the 60s or so the F units went through a seroes of changes were what had been red on the psgr units was blue or yellow.
The warbonnet red/silver went from the thirties to the creation of Amtrak in 1971. After that all Santa Fe engines were painted in the blue and yellow scheme (although I’m sure not all warbonnet passenger engines went to Amtrak so a few might have hung aroung to the mid seventies). The warbonnet scheme was reintroduced on some new engines in maybe the late eighties (?). Burlington Northern and Santa Fe merged in the mid-nineties, there are still a few BNSF diesels in the warbonnet scheme only lettered for BNSF or Santa Fe.
Jim has it mostly correct, but the Santa Fe’s original diesel switchers of the 1930s were solid black with aluminum lettering. By about 1939, aluminum sill stripes and hood pinstripes had been added, along with blue-and-aluminum Santa Fe heralds. Some switchers in southern California had orange diagonal safety stripes along the side sills by about 1940, and a few also got aluminum diagonal safety stripes along the sills in the late 1940s. The full “zebra-stripe” aluminum-and-black paint scheme was introduced on the 2650-class GP7s first delivered in 1950, and that quickly became the standard for switchers until the blue-and-yellow hood-unit schemes were introduced in 1959 (first used on 900-class SD24s). There were also a few switchers in the 1950s and early 1960s that apparently had non-standard white zebra striping, but they still had aluminum letters and numerals. so long, Andy
Many thanks for your responses looks like I should have chosen UP to model!
Excuse my ignorance but what classifies as a switcher?I’m mostly interested in the freight side so I’m tending to concentrate on GE U boats and EMD GP series locomotives although the idea of F units and a passenger train is appealing.
What was mentione briefly above were the Yellowbonnet and Bluebonnet livery on the F7s (I believe this first appeared in the late 60s/early 70s). The Warbonnet paint was not the only paint to grace passenger units. I just saw a picture of the Texas Chief being led by a Yellowbonnet.
Hello “Growlerman,” “Switcher” on the Santa Fe refers to the Alco “HH” and “S” models and EMD “NW” and “SW” models primarily, with a number of Baldwin “S” and “VO” models and Fairbanks-Morse H-10 and H-12 types thrown in for good measure. These are basically end-cab hood locomotives with B-B wheel arrangements, mostly rated for less than 1500hp, and built for yard service. As a general rule, you can simplify your choices among Santa Fe paint schemes considerably by defining your modeling period or era. All of the Santa Fe’s GE hood units, for example, came after the black-and silver zebra-stripe schemes were obsolete, although there were still many zebra-striped locomotives in operation when the first U25Bs arrived in the early 1960s. So long, Andy