Eastern Railroad Discussion > WC 2500 ex sou SD35

Does anyone have a pic of this engine? If so would like to see one. I know the unit was formally a Southern hi-hood sd35 but, later chopped the nose down. Even though it still wore its Southern paint. Was this unit rebuilt? I remember reading in one of the publications that it was rebuilt into a sd39-2 or -3 something like that. Any info would help. Do you think CN will keep it around for awhile?

The unit suffered an electrical fire and was completely rebuilt by the WC, although I am not familiar with the specs. It was assigned to Wausau as the local switcher to handle the large cuts of roof granules the WC loads out of there.

I have not heard of any plans to retire the engine since it serves a specific purpose. However, those more familiar with CN/WC will have to comment on that. Looked pretty good in WC paint when I shot it in 2000. Sorry, however, that I can't post the shot.

Nick Tharalson,
Marion, IA

Here are a couple photos of the 2500 from last year. This locomotive normally lives in Wausau, WI these days and from what I hear it is very well suited to the specific job it does (switching a 3M roofing granule plant there) so it may last a while longer.

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...and the side, showing the end of the long hood.

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Hey, Dean, what's up with the color of the locomotive? What should be maroon looks brown on that scan. Is that accurate, or is either the emulsion or the scan playing tricks with it?

I guess it may be a combination of the scan and possibly screen biases. The 2500 is painted in regular WC maroon. Another factor is the fresh snow which made everything extra bright that day. The imron paint used recently does seem to me to have a bit of a "warm" cast to it more so than the early non-imron paint used by WC, which seemed a bit more "purple-ish"

toledopatch wrote:
>
> Hey, Dean, what's up with the color of the locomotive? What
> should be maroon looks brown on that scan. Is that accurate, or
> is either the emulsion or the scan playing tricks with it?

Did you shoot that on Kodachrome or Fuji?

Seriously? I shot it on K-64, but my eye sees Velvia 100 when I look back at the scan. I'm pretty sure the result you see has more to do with the two quick scans (probably a little too quick) I belted out this morning for this guy who's looking for a photo of this particular locomotive. They went through the meat grinder real fast in order to glean as much detail as possible when it comes to the trucks, leuvers, door latches etc. then I posted 'em. If it's more than a roster that I want to share I go back with a more critical eye and compare what I have on screen to the colors represented on the slide. I don't think any modelers out there should be advised to mix scale colors according the colors seen on a monitor. It's my opinion that if one starts with good processing of Kodachrome and good processing of Fuji the inherent film differences are negated once the file has been digitized and compressed with a good quality corrected scan.
Did the image look to your eye/monitor to be either a Koda or Fuji original? If I had the raw uncorrected scan I'd put that one up find out how it comes out on your end but unfortunately I do not. Maybe later.
Cheers,
Dean

toledopatch wrote:
>
> Did you shoot that on Kodachrome or Fuji?

I asked because I did some same-subject comparison shooting on the WC back in September, using K-25 and Fuji Astia, and the Kodachromes came back with the maroon noticeably browner than the Fujis did.

Ahhh, well for curiosities sake I rescanned the and gave it the same treatment except for the color correction. While done in a hurry this am I'm pretty happy with the results albeit subtle. On top is the new scan, below the one from before. If you look at the BN car in the background and the underframe of the 2500 you'll see there was too much blue. In the one below from this morning the color corrections resulted in a cleaner image with truer grays/blacks in the underframe etc. (at least according to my screen). This time I also included the trailing until to show what I mean about the age of the paint. This may be closer to what you used as a standard when testing. For my money fresh clean maroon imron does have a bit of a rich, warm, dare I say brown cast to it that old maroon normally does not. I can't comment on K-25 since I never touched the stuff but I have been happy with the Astia I have shot.

toledopatch wrote:
>
> I asked because I did some same-subject comparison shooting on
> the WC back in September, using K-25 and Fuji Astia, and the
> Kodachromes came back with the maroon noticeably browner than
> the Fujis did.

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I caught the 2500 on a train heading N. out of Junction City in June 2001.

http://www.tbcnet.com/~kwkruse/WC_trip_060801_061001/WC_2500_n_jct_city_061001.JPG