Nice capture of a very unique locomotive Steve. As "horrible" as they turned out to be for the D&RGW and SP shop crews - and their overall performance issues, I have really come to appreciate and like these "oddball orphans". I actually think that for a variety of appearance on American railroads - EMD and GE should start putting out body designs like the Krauss-Maffei ML-4000's and other European designs. As much as I like the EMD SD70ACe - wide cabs are starting to get boring now. Bring back the days of railroading "variety" in locomotive looks.
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Funky front-end lighting...
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Dana M - I really like that comment. I'm sick and tired of endless BNSF, UP and NS widecabs. The U.S. has to realise that the so-called safety cab means nothing. Hit something big enough & hard enough - you will get Hurt/killed. Europe have no such ugliness, to the benefit of fuel-saving via improved aerodynamics and stringent safety standards.
Oddly this pattern has not affected recent US electrics.
The UK's last loco with a 'nose' was constructed in 1965 - The Class 37 - a diesel. Noses here went out of fashion shortly afterwards, along with cars sporting tailfins.
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MArailfan - That "funky-looking" lighting served a duel purpose on Southern Pacific locomotives. The two lower vertical lights could be either a standard headlight or they were MARS lights that "jiggled" like the 4449 "Daylight" has - the two horizontal lights were just steady lit headlights and the Red light on top at the peak of the nose was a rear-end marker light that was in use when the unit was on the rear of a train acting as a helper and facing in reverse much like today's "FRED".
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Dana, the red Mars Light was not used as a marker light but was lit when the locomotive was placed into 'emergency' on the automatic brake. The idea was that if a train was coming upon the one stopped, the red light would indicate that there may be crew members on the ground/in the gauge looking for defects, or that there may potentially be derailed cars across the tracks ahead and to stop or slow considerably. Conrail really was the only freight carrier to run with red marker lights to denote the end of a light locomotive move. Every other railroad just ran with the rear-most headlight on dim.
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