It's like Christmas in December, fellows!
Today (Sunday) at 10:15 A.M. the doorbell rang. It was the USPS delivering my AM Texas & Pacific set. Big surprise! Through rain, sleet, snow, dock slowdowns, Christmas shipping crunch and some rare sunshine (it's been pretty gloomy around here all month...)
My last communication from Ron was on December 22nd and the shipment still hadn't arrived at AM. He was hoping to get it to me by Christmas.
So, without further adieu:
Gotta be scale, it's marked that way on the boxes:
OK, enough of that now... 
In this day and age it's nice to open something up with no surprises. The cars come with AM's Snap-Lock dummy couplers installed. Four of the six cars have sprung bettendor trucks, the gondola unsprung roller bearing trucks and the caboose unsprung leaf-spring trucks. The locomotives are fully assembled, but with no couplers mounted. There's a package of Kadee 802's included in the box.
Seeing I had to pop the shells off to mount the couplers, here's a look at the insides:
Again no surprises. The ever dependable AM drive, a neater wiring assembly than earlier models and an LED for the headlight on the short hood end only. There's a small circuit board acting as a wiring manifold, but it's not a DCC plug. Just something to make things neat and tidy. There are holes for the Kadee's cast about half way through, so they do need to be drilled out to mount the couplers.
Put 'er on the track and it runs. Runs very well. No muss, no fuss.
So, once the couplers are mounted and the shells snapped back on, the moment you've all been waiting for:
Here are the AM T&P GP9's in all their glory, along with a Flyer GP7 for comparison. For its time, the Flyer model is pretty faithful to the T&P paint scheme as seen on this T&P GP7. With today's technology, AM was able to have an accurate rendering.
A word about the orange version and the blue version. Both schemes are "as delivered" from EMD. GP9's 1131-1136 were delivered in 1957 in Swamp Holly Orange and Black. GP9's 1137-1144 were delivered in the same scheme, but in MoPac Blue and Gray in 1959, after MoPac took a firmer grip on T&P operations.
So, here we have the GP's themselves:
Outside of the clean, sharp masking and lettering, the handrail ends and footboards are also painted orange per the prototype. There's a small "F" printed on the frame indicating the front of the unit, EMD builders plates under the cab, numbers in the numberboards(non-illuminated), classification lights (also non-illuminated) and cab window frames highlighted in silver, cab glazing and headlight lenses.
There's no overspray that I can see. Other than paint, there is no T&P-specific detailing.
As on all AM GP9's, there are no grabirons, lift rings or air tank piping. I've added these to all my other AM GP's and will probably get around to it on these units one day.
So let's stretch this set out, in the same order as in the ad. I haven't yet added the included stakes to the flat car:
Still looks nice, even on my layout...
The cars are all standard AM products. Again, no surprises. From what I can find Googling around on the web, decoration is accurate.
Presenting the flat and boxcar:
Hopper and Piggy-Back flat:
Gondola and Caboose (illuminated) :
And a last over all look at the set:
In summary, it's a neat set and I'm glad I bought it. I have no particular interest in the T&P and it had no trackage in Kansas, which I'm allegedly modeling. It was an impulse purchase, pure and simple and a darn nice one.
Rusty
