Nostalgia & History > Santa Fe Magazine: the "Golden PA" and red 1010

Earlier this year, masterphots posted photos of Santa Fe PA-1 53L decked out in gold and silver in February 1960 and 2-6-2 1010 painted bright red in February 1964, both pictured at the Redondo Junction roundhouse in Los Angeles, CA:

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,5011235

These bizarre repaints were done for General Electric home appliance sales campaigns, but other than railfan photos like these of the locomotives sitting at Redondo, I had never come across documentation or photos of the actual promotional events featuring the Santa Fe equipment.  This weekend, digging through old issues of the Santa Fe Magazine at the Southern California Railway Museum, I finally turned up a couple of short articles:

1) The golden PA was done up for the GE "Trainload of Golden Values," as related in this article from the May 1960 issue of the Santa Fe Magazine.  It contains the first photo I've seen of the train that went with the PA.  Considering it was on display in the greater Los Angeles area, there must be more photos of it around, but I've never come across any in print.  

2) Curiously, while I can find plenty of newspaper ads promoting the GE Golden Trainload sales in California in early 1960, none feature the Santa Fe train.  The only one I could find with a photo of an actual train (from the April 4, 1960 edition of North Hollywood's Valley Times) used a "photoshopped" SP black widow F-unit!

3) The 1010 was decorated (but not made operational) for GE's 1964 "Red Hot Trainload Sale."  Unlike the PA, which was quickly repainted, 1010 lingered in red paint for at least four years and made an appearance at Inglewood in its wild dress, seen here:  

http://gorillasdontblog.blogspot.com/2015/07/inglewood-train-station-1969.html

The third item below is from the April 1964 issue of the Santa Fe Magazine. 

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Wonder if the Santa Fe folks caught the SP F unit in the ad?

Fascinating advertising from when trains were more of everyday life. Living far from a metropolitan area in those years, this kind of sales event simply did not reach that far, thus what is shown here is first I’ve ever seen. Thanks.

thebluecomet Wrote:
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> Wonder if the Santa Fe folks caught the SP F unit
> in the ad?

Considering that Santa Fe didn't go through North Hollywood the "official" GE train would have not gone through there.
But SP did and this looks like the efforts of an applicience dealer in North Hollywood and not GE/Santa Fe.

Great finds

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