While i’l looked at this picture http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=218836
I wondered when it was built and what happened to it? Im guessing the above picture was not the first but whats the story behind this icon of the Railroad?
I don’t know about that picture, but FTs were in production from 1935.
The picture of the Train of Tomorrow is of an E7A not an F unit. The train of Tomorrow was comprised of the E unit and four dome cars a dome coach, Dome Diner, Dome Sleeping Car and Dome Lounge Observation. The E unit and all four dome cars were purchased by the UP and assigned to Portland - Seattle service with the E-unit actually assigned to the UP passenger pool. Three of the four dome cars were scrapped and the fourth was saved from this fate and is to be restored by a group in Ogden Utah a major undertaking.
I think- need to check references, here, which consists of the book “Vintage Diesels”- that the first FT unit (the “A” unit of an A-B-A) set still exists, and was recently used by GM on a demo run, painted in chocolate brown, with GM logos on the nose. Whether it was the first one built or not, I don’t know. I do know that there is a B unit awaiting restoration at the Georgia State Railroad museum at Duluth, Georgia. It’s in very sad shape, and when I looked it over, the interior had been gutted. It was donated by the Southern Railroad. I don’t know if any other B units exist, or if they are functional.
Hope that answers your question.
The Northern Pacific sent an A-B set of FTs to Mexico not long before NP became part of Burlington Northern. I think the FTs went to the Sonora Baja-California RR. Again if my memory is correct, the FTs were restored to operating condition in the early 1990s, although I don’t know of their current status.
EMD took a pair of early FTs on a cross country tour in the early 1990s. The FTA’s road number was EMD 103. It’s now in a museum at Kirkwood, MO.
The first FTs were released for test on the railroads in November 1939. Actual production started in late 1940.
The unit in the photo is EMD 765 an E7A built in April 1947. It was sold several years later to the Union Pacific as their 988. It was retired in December 1963 and scrapped at Pielet Brothers scrap yard near EMD. It served as a trade in on another E unit for UP. See Don Strack’s excellent Utah Rails for some more history on EMD 765:
Lyon, that be the set I saw in my book. Thanks! I now have a reason to go to Kirkwood, Missouri…