The Clinchfield's first diesel locomotive, F3A number 800, has been restored to its original paint scheme by CSX's Huntington Locomotive Shop in West Virginia. Built in December of 1948, and often referred to as an F5A, 800 was upgraded to an F7 by the Clinchfield and retained for special passenger train operations. It later wore Family Lines System and Seaboard System paint, and had a lenghty career operating as CSX number 116, wearing two different CSX paint schemes. After retirement from mainline service, it was painted as Chesapeake and Ohio 8016, and recently acquired by the Southern Appalachia Railway Museum, based in Oak Ridge, TN. Early in 2017, a deal was made betweend SARM with CSX for 800 to return to its original Clinchfield paint and serve as part of the 75th Annual Clinchfield Santa Train, operating on CSX's former Clinchfield mainline between Shelby, KY, and Kingsport, TN. In September, the unit was shipped in C&O colors from Spencer, NC (where it had been stored since the "Streamliners at Spencer" event in 2014 at the North Carolina Transportation Museum), to CSX's locomotive shop in Huntington, where it received body work and paint, and emerged in its glistening Clinchfield colors on October 25.
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.
