Nostalgia & History > SP Fs meet -- 1960s

I may have posted this before, but I pulled it out to look at again.  It's one of my favorite shots from my college days.  The meet is between the westbound Southern Pacific Truckee Local near Lawton's, Nev. just west of Reno and an eastbound.  Old Highway 40 is just off to the right and it closely followed the railroad around a bluff at Lawton's, a popular Truckee River resort in those days.  The Highway 40 curve was great place to pace trains where you received the full music, whether in dynamics or throttling up and could look the crew in the eye..

JB



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/20/15 06:26 by Copy19.

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John:

Great photo. One of the few places on the SP that I know of that single F units were used in local or mainline service.

Regards, Jim Evans

Thanks Jim.  In those days in Northern Nevada I never saw anything but Fs except for Alco PAs on passenger and Alco switchers in the yard at Sparks.  After I returned to the area in 1968 after my Navy days things were rapidly changing with the Fs replaced by mostly SD40s and SD45s.
John
 

Very cool photo John. Thanks for sharing!

Al Seever
Phoenix, AZ

John:  That reminds me of the T&P.  All freight trains, including locals, had F-7's assigned to them.  All those local crews got two A units.  They became quite adept at switching watching hand signals in their rear view mirrors.  When the GP-18's showed up the crews thought they were in heaven since they were chop-nosed and had good visibility.  It wasn't long before the GP-9's began to mixed in too.