For whatever reason railroads have made modifications to locomotives that have not exactly been esthetically pleasing. What are some of the worst examples?
Here’s a few of my picks:
Santa Fe CF7s
C&NW Crandall Cab E9s
The “Beauty Treatment” PRR applied to its K4 fleet. This included swapping the positions of the headlight and turbo generator and adding a footboard to the front of the smoke box.
Adding smoke deflectors to the Flying Scotsman.
I’ll add to the list from back in the 1970’s when the C&NW put EMD prime movers (along with an EMD long hood for engine clearance) onto some ex-Frisco and company owned Baldwin road switchers, so you ended up with the short hood and cab of a Baldwin and hte long hood of an EMD…yuk!
When the PRR streamlined some of the K4’s, the poor things looked like they ate one too many Little Debbie Snack Cakes.
A rail magazine (I don’t recall if it was model or “real”) some years ago did a story about “Horrible Heffalumps.”
There were some pretty ugly examples.
I would submit the “Dewitt Geeps.”
You forget the the Mexican San Luis Potosi shop rebuilds?
Mysteriously, crews liked the later Topeka Cab-ed CF-7s much more than the conventional GP-9ms and GP-7’ms…ATSF learned lessons from the 2649 Class that improved over time. There are still a healthy number of Topeka Cabbed CF-7’s in service that make nice switch engines with the extra glass on the engineer’s side of the cab and the extra room in the cab. (Plus the A/C on a smaller unit)
Long live the “Beep”!
Any and all of the steam locomotives that had a bathtub turned upside-down over them by any of the various egocentric “designers”. About as pretty as Marilyn Monroe in a burka.
I would submit the babyface for some consideration; the A1A-trucked versions perhaps being the worst (by comparison with anyone else’s similar locomotive and particularly the PRR BP-20s…
There was a VERY long thread here about ugly locomotives going about 3 years ago; just search ‘ugly locomotives’ and it should pop up.
I’ll agree that the “Baby face” styling is unusual, but I think the the Centipedes turned out pretty well. Besides, those large windows must give much better visibility from the cab. Personally, I think that the low-nose alco RS-3 diesels are not the most aesthetically pleasing locomotives.
Some of the ugliest locomotives had to be those with Coffin feedwater heaters applied to them, the external applications I should say. JMJ! You’ve got to work pretty hard to come up with a steam engine I don’t like!
The Paducah 1st Gen locomotive rebuilds from the 70s / 80stops my list. The mods made them more efficient but they personify the term: “Total Lack of Style!”
Here’s a “Frog Eye” Geep (pertaining to the headlights).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/57688015@N08/5355596631/in/set-72157628255099005
I remember seeing them while I was in Rantoul.
They may not be beautiful, but between the “frog eyes” and the ox-yoke air intakes, they had character…
That large single front window on the Paduch rebuilds would give the crew good visibility.
Does the frog-eye give more light than a cyclops?
Cyclops? Do you mean one of these:
http://espee.railfan.net/nonindex/sd09_photos/5345_sp-sd9-yardclerk.jpg
I have to say that the C&NW “Crandall Cab” E9 units are definitely the UGLIEST locomotives in existence! They are uglier than the CF7 units. It looks like someone chopped the nose off an F45 locomotive and welded it onto one end of an E9B unit! I saw the picture of the unit on page 18 of the January 2011 issue of Trains Magazine, and I thought to myself, “What was C&NW THINKING when they built these locomotives?!”
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Missouri_Kansas_Texas_locomotive_142.jpg
Linked is photo of : MKTRR (KATY) RS3m THe one pictured is at the Midland RR in Baldwin City, Ks.
For your perusal:
Kissin’ Cousins by Jim53171, on Flickr
Photo taken at the M19A (40th street yard) diesel shop.
And for what it’s worth, they ran as poorly as the looked; in addition, they were incredibly cold and loud in the cab (no insulation). The only nice thing about them was the rebuilt control stand, with the 26L brake valve replacing the 24RL.
Well, the cyclops, which is mentioned in the Odyssey, had only one eye–in the middle of its forehead. That the one who had captured Odysseus and his men when they was on their way back to Greece from Troy had only one eye made it much easier for Odysseus to blind him and make it possible for them to escape–Odyseus had to stab only one eye. Greek mythology tells us that one of the gods took pity on this blinded cyclops and gave him two good eyes (I don’t think that they were frogeyes, though)–after Odysseus and his men had made good their escape.
But you don’t answer why you think a Cyclops (which in Greek means round eye, not single eye) is supposed to give light, or why you asked if a Paducah frogeye gave more light…
IC (and then ICG) for many years ran “Mars” lights on their locomotives. As I recall, one light was white, one red, and I suspect they operated much the same as the classic SP light cluster. They had been removed by the time the image in this thread was taken.
In the early 70’s they went to a three light fixture with two whites alternating, and a flashing red when desired.
As for the frog-eye lights, I suspect somebody at Paducah saw them in the catalog (Pyle?) and thought they’d look nice. AFAIK, they used the same bulbs as everything else. Whether their position at the top of the short hood made any difference for the crew visibility-wise would have to come from a crew member.