Museum & Santa Fe Railway Chicago Alco PA set 1948

Looks like it was in a wreck! 😳  Are they made of copper? Exacta similar? Cool stuff Carey

Yes cars are molded copper ...they have had a rough life .

Cheers Carey

Great video, saw that layout in the early 90s, looked like USH SD45s in the freight scheme and up to date freight cars at that time, very impressed.

I grew up in Chicago during the 1950s and 60s, and my first stop at every visit to the MSI was the Santa Fe layout. I had received a Lionel set for Christmas 1955 that was headed by Warbonnet F-units, and had seen the real thing a number of times around town, so I had hoped to see Warbonnet F-units on the layout. However, every time I visited, the blue and yellow freight units were pulling the trains. (Sorry, the warbonnet ALCOs didn't cut it for me...hey, I was just a kid.) Nevertheless, I always would do an extended walk-around of the layout, as well as a visit to the balcony, to see the overview. Great memories!

I saw the layout i think it was 1986, my mother and sister went to Cats the broadway musical we lived in Iowa, road trip. My dad and I went to the MSI and I was mesmerized by the F units in Warbonnet pulling the chrome lustered silver cars. It wasn’t long after the rebuilt the layout took place, we went back around 1990 and I was not impressed as much by the freeway thing but it did represent the era. I was very fortunate to see it in its original form. A woman let me see how they ran it on a stand up control panel on one end.. wow to a 12 year old. Cool beans.

when these were up for auction from MSI I did not bid because I could not run them.

instead, I bid and obtained other accessory and model pieces.

I lived in Hyde Park in the sixties and visited the museum about once a month, as I recall there was always at least one passenger train running at the museum layout. They were all lw PS, ACF and Budd models stainless cars. The custom built El Capitan was THE show stopper imo. They also had two or three other conventional sets representing the Super Chief (had a dome car,) Grand Canyon and Chief (again what I recall not certain)

By then there was only one PA visible on the layout and it was poking it's face out of the one of the bays of the Barstow-ish modern Diesel Shop. One of the cast CLW Baldwin Centercabs was still there too, on a yard lead and like the PA it never moved. Being a EJ&E fan I found that one particularly irresistible. At that time all the moving trains were powered by nicely painted matching four-unit ABBA All Nation F7's, appropriately passenger power in the Warbonnet and freight power in the Blue Yellow. On later visits in the 70's and 80's the freight power was upgraded successively to CLW or KTM EMD Road switcher models like Gp30 or 35's, there might have been even newer models later that I missed entirely, I do seem to recall  FP-45's on the last passenger train I saw, but I might have that confused with another museum pike at the time. Compared to how emmaculate it looked in the sixties, it started getting pretty dowdy and run down in it's later life which was sad.

It's a shame it's all gone now, very cool that Carey has found these.

In 1983 on a vacation trip, I took the following photos of the Santa Fe layout at the museum.

Thought I would post them here. Hope it brings back fond memories to others as it did to me when I found them today. Sorry for blurring, best I could do.

Pure Gold! Sorry I missed seeing these too, I never went back after 1980, note U-Boats!  *sigh*

Thanks for posting these,

Thank you for posting your photos from the 1983 visit to MSI ...one of the SD45'S..could be mine ..

Please see link

https://youtu.be/ITu9roWCwL0

The layout was seen by many millions of folks ... hopefully in time additional photos will surface .

Cheers Carey

Carey,

You are most welcome.

I really enjoy your post of early O scale.

Leon

Pure GOLD thanks for posting that! Hey Carey where are those Hi-Level cars!?

Eric ....they are on the short list to hunt down ..I remember them well from the layout ..gliding by .

Cheers Carey