Nostalgia & History > an F with wings!

When you think of the many faces of the classic F unit a small army of railroad paint schemes come readily to mind. But you don’t exactly think of Uncle Pete’s shield & nose wings. Consequently, when do think of UP’s famous wings you do not think of the F unit.

But here comes a shot from the camera of the late Mr Emil Albrecht back in 1971. It’s just a commonplace image of a work-a-day freight F doing exactly what it was designed for. It’s also an image of Union Pacific’s shield/wings combination on front of a familiarly sculpted curves of an EMD face. But it’s not an E-unit, it’s an F! Put both depictions together in the same shot and we end up with a remarkable image not often seen.

1. UP 519 on a manifest at Swan Lake, ID on May 5, 1971.
(photo by Emil Albrecht, from the James W. Watson collection)

Thanks for looking back!
Lance Garrels (santafe199)
Jim Watson (UP6900)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/22 20:13 by santafe199.

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Neat shot Lance.  This one eventually became Rock Island # 4156. 

Didn't ALL Union Pacific F-units have wings?

Apparently, the F's were common on the Spokane International around the era of your photograph.

Rick

rschonfelder Wrote: > Apparently, the F's were common on the Spokane International around the era of  }-**Mr Albrecht's**-{ photograph.

No doubt that's true. My last sentence was probably a little mis-leading. What I meant was it seems that photos of UP F-units seem to be a lot more scarce overall than the more glorified occupants of the roster, such as the double engined Centennials and GE C & D boats and other road units that roamed the main line of US hwy 30 fame...

Lance

 

Great showing Lance.  Fs always seemed to be neat leaders in freight service.
Brian Stevens

Great photo, I think I actually got to ride on a light move between North Side and Sylvannia Yard in Ft Worth in 1974 with one of these mu'd with a leased Detroit Edison SD-40 , as I recall it still had all it's UP markings intact including the wings and was still quite snazzy looking if a bit dirty. The Rock was power short and a rolling  "mixed grill" then, you never knew what you'd see in the yard or on the nose. Their employees back then were fan friendly too, later I discovered they had a local BBQ hangout nearby on the east side of the river called The Pit where you could chat them up about the company's goings on afterward. Pretty neat.

It looks like a GP9B second unit out.