Vintage Southern

[Ponce de Leon]

I've been posting a few of my musty, dusty images of the Southern on Rail Pictures the last couple of days. Here are some links:

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=368516&nseq=0

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=368507&nseq=1

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=368387&nseq=2

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=368363&nseq=3

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=368341&nseq=4

Ron Flanary

[beal99]

Great stuff Ron, what are you using to scan?

[E.M. Bell]

Great stuff...not that we would expect any less! Those motors sure look funny without the Southern logo on the nose.

[Ptrainman]

Nice shots there. Why is the Southern logo not on the nose of those units? I thought it was on all of them.


Paul

[butch]

Thanks for sharing.

[Ponce de Leon]

These were all scanned with a Nikon Coolscan V.

Nose heralds on Southern's cab units started disappearing around 1959, when black and imitation aluminum (off white) replaced green. The familiar circular herald with the added "Look Ahead Look South" below started showing up again about 1969---an improvement brought about by Graham Claytor.

Since all of the shots in my links predated 1969, the units had no heralds. For that matter none of the units had nose heralds at that time (GP9s, SD35s, GP30s, etc.). I recall the heralds being on new GP38s being delivered in '69----and heralds then started showing up on all kinds of power.

The F-units were gone from the Appalachia Division when the replacement GP38s started arriving around September of '69. They were reassigned to other places, of course. I rode F-units on ballast, work and rail trains on the St. Louis line and the Rat Hole in 1970, but when I came back to Somerset after the Army in the spring of '72, the few remaining Fs were gone elsewhere.

F-units were neat machines. I'll forever recall riding the rear unit of four on a northbound rail train out of Oakdale one hot night in the summer of 1970----riding in the engineer's seat, looking back over the train with the rear headlight illuminated, and sticking my head out the window on the grade up through Lancing and listening to the those 567Bs reverberate off the hills. Awesome!

Ron Flanary

[Backyard]

  Did the F-units have a good cab heater?

[Ponce de Leon]

Well...to be honest, most of my Southern F-unit riding experiences were in the summer time. For darn sure, they didn't have air conditioners!

I remember turning the overhead reading light on during that nocturnal climb up through Lancing, and the air was thick with sand and exhaust smoke. It's a thousand wonders I don't have lung cancer.

Today's crews have no idea what wonderful creature comforts they enjoy in those wide-nose, air-conditioned cabs with tinted windows and other amenities. But----can you imagine what it must have been like to blast through the old tunnel at Kings Mountain in the cab of a slow-moving Ms4 Mike?

Ron F.

[lwjabo]

The design of the F units made it tight and so they tended to be warm in winter. The double door kept air from blowing into the cab. Note the new wide units copied this. So this made the units rather warm also in summer. They had the old vent windows from memory. That could catch air from the outside and move into the cab. Just like cars did at one time. The vent windows were those little triangle windows in from of the side windows. The seats on the F units were good. Much thicker than the old Southern and N&W seats on other units. They had arm rests also. By 1971 when I hired they had seen there best days. We used them on the ballast trains and locals. We ran a extra train numbered 560 to Chattanooga. It would have F units and they also used them on the locals that went to Chattanooga. They were engines due in the shop in Chattanooga. Working a local from a F unit for 12 or more hours a brakeman was worn out.

[lwjabo]

Let's just say a F unit would not be as HOT in Summer as a GP, SD or a GE with the long hood forward. Not only the smoke but heat of long hood forward warmed up the cabs in Summer.

[Ponce de Leon]

Oh....I fully agree. I've experienced that as well aboard Southern SD45s.

And---back to F-units, here's another old one on the Appalachia Division that I uploaded to RP.net---this one from the summer of '68:

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=368697&nseq=3

Ron

[Backyard]

  I just wanted to know, because in my mind (& maybe my heart), I wanted to know of a warm cab on a cold Winter's day...

Thanks to Ponce de Leon for your presentation(s).