Calling Number 90!

Over on Trainorders.com, Marty Benard has been post LOTS of color photos from the late Roger Puta. Mr. Puta worked for the Santa Fe back in the mid to late 1960s, and was surely an EXCELLENT photographer. My membership on Trainorders.com has certainly been well worth it, just viewing Marty Benard's fabulous color slides of the CB&Q and Santa Fe alone.

I had an e-mail from Marty about two weeks or so ago advising BNSF's art curator had been in touch with him concerning some of Roger's photos.  Turns out the curator was using one of Roger's photos Marty had posted to restore a mural that had hung in Santa Fe's travel bureau office in Chicago back in the 1950's / 1960's time frame.  The photo enabled the curator to get a better idea of the colors and what the mural had looked like before age had damaged it.

Curt

Great photo of the Kansas City Chief at Dearborn Station!

Joe

OK, what train was numbered 90?

Dominic Mazoch posted:

OK, what train was numbered 90?

Not a "train". You would have to be a Santa Fe enthusiast to understand Tom's reference to "Number 90".

Number 90, for me, means the Great Western Baldwin decapod now on the Strasburg, and a loco that has not been available in three rail.

The original poster is referring to Tom Campbell, who's OGR handel is "Number 90", as Tom is retired from the Santa Fe Railway. 

Thank You, Hot.

Ever since I was a kid, I thought an ABBA set of Santa Fe F's was one of the "eye candy" delights of railroading.

The photo does not have the ABBA set, but it's got that great red and yellow nose! And, it's well composed,

in my opinion.

I think Tom, our Number 90, may have operated some of these locomotives.

Ed

NUMBER 90...

Ed Mullan posted:

Thank You, Hot.

Ever since I was a kid, I thought an ABBA set of Santa Fe F's was one of the "eye candy" delights of railroading.

The photo does not have the ABBA set, but it's got that great red and yellow nose! And, it's well composed,

in my opinion.

I think Tom, our Number 90, may have operated some of these locomotives.

 

Ed

Notice the Chief placard isn't in it's usual spot on the first B unit?

Rusty

Wyhog posted:

I assume this is the Number 90 that Number 90 takes his user name from? http://www.rrpicturearchives.n...ture.aspx?id=3339902

At last, at last!!!!   Somebody understands.

I'm still here.   Ed, I only check RailPictures now and then, but, by coincidence, I took a look yesterday and saw the photo, quite by accident.  I had searched for Rock Island photos in New Mexico, and found several good ones posted by Marty Bernard, so I did a second search to see what else he had posted, and that's when I saw the fine photo of the Kansas City Chief awaiting departure from Dearborn Station.  It really does capture the essence of Santa Fe passenger service.  And you're right, Ed, I did have the pleasure of running some rednose F3 and F7 units right at the end of Santa Fe passenger service and in the first years of Amtrak, as a Fireman.  I could hold a passenger assignment for a few trips at a time then.

Wyhog, I saw your footprints on the floor when I ran the same FP45 number 91.  What did you think of the ride?  Those FP45's could rock and roll a bit when going through turnouts, which bothered some people.  I always liked running them because the cabs were so roomy.  I recall that they had one odd feature -- the Engineer's windshield wiper controlled the wipers on both the left and the right windshields.

Rusty, I tip my hat to you for your observation.  The Indian head is indeed in an unusual place on the first booster unit.

Although the Great Western/Strasburg Number 90 is a nice steam engine, certainly worthy of admiration, my user name refers to the Fairbanks-Morse Erie-Built passenger engine that I admired as a boy in the 1950's.

She's a beauty...

Thanks for posting the photo of Number 90, Mill City.

I looks like the location is the Redondo Jct. roundhouse in Los Angeles.  Here's a little trivia: You may notice that the windshield appears to be dirty or cloudy.  However it is neither dirt nor a  defect in the glass -  it's Bon-Ami.  Santa Fe was still using bars of Bon-Ami to clean windshield glass in the mild climate of California well into the 1970's.  The laborer took a rag saturated with water, and used the bar of Bon-Ami to make a paste, which was wiped onto the glass and allowed to dry.  When dry, it was a light powder which easily wiped off with a dry rag.  It cleaned everything off of the glass.

I thought ATSF had only one Erie Built cab unit set.

Yes, only one: 90L - 90A - 90B.  90A was the booster; 90L and 90B were cabs.

Number 90 posted:

Yes, only one: 90L - 90A - 90B.  90A was the booster; 90L and 90B were cabs.

OK, I'm a bit confused.  I can see the "L" being a cab unit for "Lead".  But on the picture at Dearborn, the cab unit used the letter "C".  So ATSF did not use the letter "A" for their cab units?

Dominic Mazoch posted:

Number 90 posted:

Yes, only one: 90L - 90A - 90B.  90A was the booster; 90L and 90B were cabs.

OK, I'm a bit confused.  I can see the "L" being a cab unit for "Lead".  But on the picture at Dearborn, the cab unit used the letter "C".  So ATSF did not use the letter "A" for their cab units?

In the Santa Fe scheme of things, the "A" suffix was normally a B-unit. 

For example an A-B-B-A set of F3's would be 32L-32A-32B-32C.   This type of suffix sequencing carried over across all of Santa Fe's first generation carbody units.

In the case of the 90 class FM A-B-A trio, it was 90L-90A-90B.  The 50 class DL109's were 50L-50A.

The "L" didn't appear on the numberboards, but as a small L under the nose herald.  On a "C" unit, there would be a C at this location, along with a C in the numberboards.

As an aside, it should be noted that the Chicago Great Western (which had a penchant for F-units)  had B-unit suffixes going all the way up to "G."

Rusty

Thanks for clearing this up.  One detain Lionel did not put on my 1950's 2353 F3 units!   But I can see the "L" or "C" detail would be hard to miss, except for ATSF personal and fans. Are Lionel, MTH and Atlas placing the "L" or "C" on their models like the picture above?

Atlas is going to build some units with the C in the number board.  MTH, I can't say. 

The F3 and F7 units did not originally display the C in the number board of the C unit.  This practice began in the mid-1950's.  It's complicated, and I don't want to put anyone to sleep with a lengthy posting.  Anyone who needs the full explanation can email me at the address on my profile.