Nostalgia & History > She's Really "Super" - ATSF 314C

I took this Agfachrome when Mike Ondecker and I were in Joliet, Illinois on August 6, 1972. According to Mike's notes, this is the "Super Chief (- El Capitan)" pulled by ATSF 314C, 312B, 302, 320A, 314A, and 315A.
Bob
P.S. Thanks to Paul Woodring for correcting the name. At that time it was called "Super Chief - El Capitan".



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/13/20 12:57 by refarkas.

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Early Amtak train - I think I see Amtrak painted baggage there.

Nice shot!

RC Lundgren
Elgin, TX

Great shot Bob!!! Don't know if you know this or not,  but were that many units common for this train and how far did they run with all 6 units? All the way to LA? Sure glad those aren't windsocks on top of the signal bridge! ; ^ )

Old Santa Fe Railway Fort Madison, IA based passenger train and engine crews worked to and from Chicago.
 

The ATSF F-units were all leased by Amtrak, was the last big show of F-units until the SDP40F's arrived in '73.  But they were having some real reliability problems, and the first reaction was to set them up elephant style so that you could swap out a lead unit that failed without turning anything.   ATSF didn't lease the good F45's and FP45's.

I rode the Chief (19/20) in July '72 and it was ABAB, and the old girls hit 97mph with stopwatch milepost timing west of Dodge City trying to make up some time.    

So these shots REALLY timestamp a date, when you see F-units with Amtrak stripes behind; that only lasted about a year.   Note that the normally pristine 'paint every pilot silver' every trip routine was long-gone, and the chicken-basket spark arrestors which didn't show up regularly until about late 1970.

For a while ATSF was running F45's with a B unit for steam generation as the F's were getting so near-death and were plugging up the railroad.

Same spot, same train, early '73, with the steam generator car in the consist:

https://csanders429.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/imgjl872nkg.jpg

You have to remember that Santa Fe seemed hell-bent on distancing themselves from what had been an excellent reputation for passenger service post-Amtrak.   Everything red and silver got a fast repaint into the new "Yellowbonnet", "Ship and Travel' was replaced by the billboard "Santa Fe".  The whole thing seemed to be a 'don't confuse this thing with us and we're out of here' reaction.  They wouldn't even see red and silver cans of paint for 17 years.

Looked it up - the "Super Chief" name retraction was March 1974.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 08/12/20 13:49 by randgust.

What a great shot !
One of the more impressive early Amtrak trains (even if it looks like Santa Fe was still operating it).
All those F units are quite a sight.
I guess it was shortly after this that Santa Fe made Amtrak drop the Super Chief name (along with the Texas Chief).
Gary

Early Amtrak at its very best.  A wonderful photo.
Thanks for this super photo posting.
ALLEN

Great photo of the eastbound Super Chief about to cross the Rock Island diamonds.

Bob Krieger
Cheyenne, WY

randgust Wrote:

> The ATSF F-units were all leased by Amtrak, was
> the last big show of F-units until the SDP40F's
> arrived in '73.  But they were having some real
> reliability problems, and the first reaction was
> to set them up elephant style so that you could
> swap out a lead unit that failed without turning
> anything.   ATSF didn't lease the good F45's and
> FP45's.

Santa Fe did lease a number of F45's and at least three FP45's to Amtrak in early 1973 when a block of the old F's were returned.  There are quite a few photos showing this, including the one in the link you posted:

https://csanders429.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/imgjl872nkg.jpg
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,3772123
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2456510,2457215#2457215
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2677845
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2012916,2012918#2012918
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,718408,718416#718416

The cowls and the last of the carbody F's were returned by Amtrak when the first order of SDP40F's showed up in mid-1973.

> So these shots REALLY timestamp a date, when you
> see F-units with Amtrak stripes behind; that only
> lasted about a year.   

It was actually two years, from Amtrak's startup in May 1971 until the last block of 300-class F's was returned at the end of July 1973.

> You have to remember that Santa Fe seemed
> hell-bent on distancing themselves from what had
> been an excellent reputation for passenger service
> post-Amtrak.  Everything red and silver got a
> fast repaint into the new "Yellowbonnet"

I have to confess I don't see a vast conspiracy here.  Santa Fe repainted its power more frequently as a matter of course back then compared to what most Class-1's do today.  Even then, quite a few red and silver F's worked freight for a few years before going to Cleburne for CF7 conversion still in their passenger colors.  The first freight scheme for former passenger F's was actually the dark blue and silver "bluebonnet," but just seven former passenger F7A's from the 325-class (not leased to Amtrak) got this scheme in the year after Amtrak.  The yellow and silver "yellowbonnet" started appearing on the 325-class in mid-1972 at the same time the blue and yellow warbonnet scheme was adopted for freight units.  The fact that Santa Fe re-introduced the well known curve from their passenger scheme on their modern freight power would tend to suggest the railroad wasn't quite as eager to distance itself from its past as you're suggesting. 

Note also that FP45 5944 was still red and silver in 1973 when it was briefly leased to Amtrak.  If the silver undercarriage touch-ups were "long gone" after two whole years, then 5944 certainly didn't get a "fast repaint" into blue and yellow.

To me, the guy to settle this would be Joe McMillan, the book of record I refer to is "Santa Fe's Diesel Fleet", plus being across the entire railroad in June of '72.

I photo'd and recorded the car numbers on my train, and the only Amtrak stripes I saw on a Chicago - Los Angeles - San Francisco - Chicago loop was the 10-6 on the Chief.  Every other passenger car was rainbow.   So while Amtrak started in '71, even by mid '72 it was mostly rainbow.  So when you start to see head-end cars showing up in Phase 1 along with the F-units, that still a pretty darn narrow window of time.   Technically it was two years but at least in '72 the Phase 1 was still darn rare.   I photo'd that sleeper as it was the only Amtrak stripe car I saw.   I saw ONE yellowbonnet unit in Illinois, I think it was a GP39, and blew as many shots of it as I could as I'd never seen one before.

I don't know whether the F45's and FP45's showed up late '72 as protection power due to F-unit  reliability ssues, or due to the F-unit lease expiration of a block; I've never read or seen evidence of the time period of the original F-unit leases by number.   But the F45's and FP45's were certainly front-line power in that era on the Super C, probably due to fast gearing, until the first order of the 'fast' SD45-2's showed up (including the bicentennials).   I can believe short-term protection power and not everything was geared that fast, but  specific unit assignments dedicated to Amtrak?   The individual locomotive records also seem to indicate that steam generators were pulled on the GE's way before '72, and were pulled on the FP45's, which is why you'll see the steam generators and trailing B units in late '72-early '73.  F45's had pass-thru steam lines on a batch of them anyway.

There were ony two FP45's that survived in silver and red, getting rather grimy, but it was 5942 and 5944.    They showed up a LOT in the Super C in 72-73, a few very rare shots have both in the same train.    There was one or two U30CG's, none of the U28CG's after '72, I think one U30CG was 8001.   Second yellowbonnet was done on a U28CG and that turned out to be the ultimate pattern that got copied (first ugly yellowbonnet SD45 was not a hit).    McMillan says Amtrak nixed the yellowbonnet on the leased units and wanted red and silver, there are at least a couple of shots of F-units in front of the Barstow shop post '71 in fresh paint.   But wow, post-Amtrak, it's always looked to me as a very 'agressive' program to eliminate the red and silver scheme as quickly as possible even if the paint was OK.    I know that on-board the Chief diner (yellow UP) it was just plain wierd, you had disposable supplies and placemats from a variety of railroads, the only Amtrak thing I collected was a plastic swizzle stick and a donated "Tracks are Back!" button from the conductor.

I've seen a ton of photos of the red and silver F-units showing up in the Wichita-Superior line in '73-74 prior to CF7 conversion.   They seemed to be in no particular hurry to get rid of the paint if it was headed to Cleburne post '73.   But you didn't see any freight F-units get any attention either, that era showed freight F's as some of the all-time grimiest power on a railroad that usually prided itself in clean units.

Now you'll have me checking my late '72 photos trying to determine if there really were specific unit assignments of FP45's or F45's!  But my own personal favorite, 5942, was captured in Dec. of '72 on the point of the Super C in very fresh yellowbonnet.   Couldn't have been under lease to Amtrak in that period and that's before the SDP40F's arrived.

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=2074290

You'll see 5942 in several of those prior links in Amtrak service post F-units.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/13/20 07:00 by randgust.

randgust Wrote:

> To me, the guy to settle this would be Joe
> McMillan, the book of record I refer to is "Santa
> Fe's Diesel Fleet", plus being across the entire
> railroad in June of '72.

> I don't know whether the F45's and FP45's showed
> up late '72 as protection power due to F-unit 
> reliability ssues, or due to the F-unit lease
> expiration of a block; I've never read or seen
> evidence of the time period of the original F-unit
> leases by number.   

Page 49 of Santa Fe's Diesel Fleet says:

"In mid-January 1973, thirty-eight of these units (300-class F's) were reassigned to freight service when replaced by 5900/5940-class F/FP45's...the new Amtrak SDP40F's began arriving on the Santa Fe in June 1973, and as they began assuming passenger assignments the remaining thirty-six 300-class units were released from Amtrak service and reassigned to freight duties.  The last eight units...were released on July 31, 1973." 

It's not a number-by-number accounting, but it does give a timeline.  A photo caption on page 14 of another McMillan book, High Green to Marceline, says:

"Old age was creeping up on the Santa Fe passenger F-unit fleet by early 1973, resulting in repeated delays to Amtrak's Super Chief.  Santa Fe, tired of the situation, unilaterally replaced the F-units on the train with F45's, an F-unit booster, and a steam generator car for steam.  The unusual power consists were replaced in mid-1973 with the arrival of the new Amtrak SDP40Fs."

> The individual locomotive
> records also seem to indicate that steam
> generators were pulled on the GE's way before '72,
> and were pulled on the FP45's, which is why you'll
> see the steam generators and trailing B units in
> late '72-early '73. 

Even when the FP45's had their boilers and the F45's had through steam lines, Santa Fe still used trailing steam generator cars behind FP45/F45 combinations in the two years immediately before Amtrak:

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,4921227,4922374#4922374
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2503322,2503322#2503322
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,3546999,3546999#3546999
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2811355,2811355#2811355

Photos exist showing 5945 in pinstripes and 5944 in red and silver pulling Amtrak trains with the steam generator intakes and exhausts still visible on the roof at the rear of the units - see for example the June 1973 photo of 5944 in this old thread:

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2456510,2457215#2457215

> But wow, post-Amtrak, it's
> always looked to me as a very 'agressive' program
> to eliminate the red and silver scheme as quickly
> as possible even if the paint was OK.   

> I've seen a ton of photos of the red and silver
> F-units showing up in the Wichita-Superior line in
> '73-74 prior to CF7 conversion.   They seemed to
> be in no particular hurry to get rid of the paint
> if it was headed to Cleburne post '73. 

They had an aggressive program to eliminate the red and silver as quickly as possible, but they were in no particular hurry? 

> But my own
> personal favorite, 5942, was captured in Dec. of
> '72 on the point of the Super C in very fresh
> yellowbonnet.   Couldn't have been under lease
> to Amtrak in that period and that's before the
> SDP40F's arrived.

At least four photos exist online or in print showing 5942 on Amtrak trains in 1973.  One is here on July 4, 1973 with a single new SDP40F trailing:

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2456510,2457215#2457215

Another from July 1973 at LAUPT with an F45 and another SDP40F:

http://slideliquidators.com/product/atsf-5942-and-5932-at-los-angeles-union-passenger-terminal-july-1973/

This view shows 5942 trailing F45 5922 at Joliet, IL:

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,4879671,4879671#4879671

One other is on page 57 of Santa Fe Through Passenger Service in Color v.1 from May 1973, showing 5943 without steam generator roof fixtures trailing 5945 in pinstripes which still has a steam generator exhaust stack visible.

RE: Another from July 1973 at LAUPT with an F45 and another SDP40F: 

http://slideliquidators.com/product/atsf-5942-and-5932-at-los-angeles-union-passenger-terminal-july-1973/ 

Pretty cool shot !!