Nostalgia & History > GP30 Thursday: Wichita, KS

In the summer of 1976 I made the pleasant discovery that there was nothing at all wrong with shooting “train, engine & freight car pictures”. After a childhood spell with HO gauge toy train sets, I had regained model railroading at a more mature age of 19, give or take. I quickly met fellow modelers around my home town of Manhattan. In particular one of those guys was fully into paint & decal work on undecorated Athearn bodies of all kinds. With energy & exuberance I hadn’t known was possible KSU Computer Science grad school student Mr Daniel Joseph Codespoti was well on his way to becoming a master painter in the hobby. The hook was in deep, right away!

Of course, you can’t paint & decal RR ‘stuff’ without knowing exactly where to place the decals. Having pictures was the obvious answer. So Dan & I “invented” a way to procure such pictures. We would actually go out of town to places where trains & cars were plentiful. At the ripe ol’ age of 21 (barely) I thought we had stumbled onto something unique! But for me that bubble soon burst as it became fully apparent that railfan photographers had been shooting paint & decal “template” photos like ours for lots & lots of years. :^)

At any rate, all that summer Dan & I would go forth on missions seeking any & all such photo templates. He with his fancy Minolta SRT101, and me with my semi-trusty Instamatic 126 sidekick Kodak X-15. On a trek to Wichita in August of ’76 Dan & I captured this Santa Fe GP30. I had seen lots of UP GP30s on my hometown KP. But this was one of the first AT&SF versions I had ever seen in person. I was either out of 126 slide film, or my slides were so bad I threw them out in my “Great slide collection purge of ‘82”.

Funny thing, I never got around to painting any HO GP30s at all. Athearn’s HO model had the rear headlight incorrectly vertical instead of horizontal! Imagine that: an Instamatic shooter being such a nit-picker for correct detail…

1. Front & back roster shot views of AT&SF 3232 at the roundhouse in Wichita, KS in August of 1976.
(Original slides by Daniel J Codespoti)

Thanks for looking back!
Lance Garrels (santafe199)
Dan Codespoti (SouthRailDan)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/05/23 04:09 by santafe199.

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Nice views and shots of this GP30.
Gary

Had one of those Atheran Santa Fe GP30. With your rear headlight update don't miss it anymore.

Don Allender