Modern manufacturers cater to their customers wishes... some outfits ask for nose mounted headlights and number boards; while, others... they like theirs to be installed above the windshields...
Ditch lights have been mounted above and below deck, too; mostly above... these days.
Besides, personal preferences... I wonder if anybody, ever, through testing... determined which locations were superior, re: their visibility... without hindering oncoming traffic?
Rick
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During the days when Santa Fe was in its Quality Committee phase, Engineers on the Valley Division, where the fog is frequent and very dense, made a convincing presentation that, when the headlight was mounted on the nose (as on F45's) they could see better in the fog than when they had Geeps or SD45's with the headlight above the windshield, which, they said, tended to reduce visibility due to reflecting on the fog.
There is more than one opinion on this, but that was the reason Santa Fe moved all the headlights to the nose. The first geeps purchased with the low-mounted headlights were the EMD GP60's in the 4000-Class. EMD was easy to work with on that. GE was not. They wanted a very high price to route the headlight wiring to the nose and mount the headlight there. So Santa Fe ordered more GP60's. After that GE was quite willing to mount the headlight wherever requested at a reasonable price and got an order for more B40-8's.
Thanks for the info, Tom.
There must be a superior position, re: the placement and the end results...
I recall hearing something, years ago, re: oncoming trains lighting - something about one of the lighting positions... helped to reduce the approaching crews eye strain.
Personal preferences/biases aside, one position should be superior...
Rick
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