A few years after AL Gilbert's Alco S6 switcher was damaged in a collision, the grain company acquired a replacement - GP8 2004, numbered for the year it was acquired. This locomotive was built by EMD in December 1952 as Detroit Toledo & Ironton GP7 957. It was later purchased by Illinois Central Gulf when that road's "Paducah" GP rebuilding program was in full swing, and it was reborn as ICG GP8 7985. When the Chicago Central & Pacific Railroad was spun off the ICG on Christmas Eve 1985, this was one of many Paducah GPs that became property of the CC, at first retaining its ICG number (as CC 7985) and later getting renumbered to CC 1585. In 1996, the CC was purchased by Illinois Central (which had dropped the "Gulf" from its name in 1988), and this locomotive became IC 8415. Sixty-five years later, this venerable GP is still working, although not too strenuously, in the warm California sun. (Or, on this June 18, 2017, day, the HOT California sun, as the temperature reached 105ºF!) And the sun hasn’t been kind to this engine’s bright red paint job, either, in the past thirteen years, either.
Not
just heritage schemes, not just commemorative schemes - this album is devoted to some of the world's most interesting paint schemes, past or present.
