Nostalgia & History > Switcher Saturday

Here are a couple of shots of Santa Fe's EMD TR4 set 2418-2418A at the Argentine Kansas Yard. Unfortunately I had put no information on these old slides, but my best guess is that they are from early 1971. I believe that this was one of two sets of TR4s that the Santa Fe purchased, both assigned to the Argentine Yard.

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Nice Argentine history! During my 2 week stint as a Kansas City Division switchman in October of 1978 I actually worked 2 different shifts with this same pair. They had been renumbered to 1418/1418A by then. It appears there is a slightly darker blue field behind the "2418" in your image #2. Could this be the result of some prior renumbering?
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Lance



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/14/17 09:59 by santafe199.

Huh....I thought the calf units didn't have a narrowing/tapering waist as often modeled by mfr's, however it sure looks like there is indeed an narrowing/tapering waist per the shadowing in the top photo.

tehachapifan Wrote:
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> Huh....I thought the calf units didn't have a
> narrowing/tapering waist as often modeled by
> mfr's, however it sure looks like there is indeed
> an narrowing/tapering waist per the shadowing in
> the top photo.

For some reason known only to EMD the TR2B's, TR3B's and the TR4B's had the taper while the TR5B's and the TR6B's didn't.

santafe199 Wrote:

> It appears there is a slightly
> darker blue field behind the "2418" in your image
> #2. Could this be the result of some prior
> renumbering?

The cow-calf sets were built as ATSF 2418/2418A and 2419/2419A, so there wasn't a renumbering over a patch of fresh blue here. The apparent darker blue field behind the road number is more likely the result of a shadows/highlights image adjustment. Those automatic correction routines usually dial back their brightening of dark areas when they get close to a boundary with a lighter color such as the bright yellow of the road numbers. Note that the unit also appears to have darker blue bands everywhere the blue meets yellow.