Nostalgia & History > More SP/SF "non-merger" painted locomotives

On December 1, 1985 SPSF locomotives 1569 and 5959 are fresh out of the paint shop at the San Bernardino, CA ATSF Locomotive facility. The merger was "still born"; dead before it was consummated. The paint scheme is nothing more than a remembrance of a corporate misadventure and the shops have been closed and demolished and been replaced with an inter modal facility. Only the smokestack remains today.

1. Photo one of SD39 #1569 and F45 #5959
2. 1569 from above
3. a pristine 5959
From 8x10 prints taken with a Pentax 6x7.

Don Bowen
Exeter, CA

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Slugs in primer waiting to be painted with the SPSF "non-merger" Red/Yellow scheme. I don't know the orgin of the slug frame and trucks but the trimount trucks probably indicates an Alco.

Don Bowen
Exeter, CA

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Great stuff, Don!

Africansteam

dlbowen Wrote:

> Slugs in primer waiting to be painted with the
> SPSF "non-merger" Red/Yellow scheme. I don't know
> the orgin of the slug frame and trucks but the
> trimount trucks probably indicates an Alco.

Those are probably 142, 143, and 144, the three Alco-based slugs that got SPSF paint. Santa Fe was in the middle of replacing its 6 Alco-based 140-series slugs with new slugs bearing the same numbers at the time, and the result was that three old slugs and three new slugs got red and yellow. The 142-4 were all cut down from RSD-5's, and would be retired in 1987, replaced by blue and yellow slugs cut down from two SP U33C's and a wrecked Santa Fe SD40-2 (5208, which became the new 142).

Geeze, right out of the box

You know, when you look at the effort that was put into the merger plans, it had to be more than a shock to both the SF and SP when the Government said NO to the merger. All that money that was spent to set the merger up had to be quite large. What a shame.

Jim