A good capture of one of the best paint schemes ever to be applied to a diesel locomotive. I thought that back in the late fourties and early fifties when I was a youngster, and still think so in my late seventies!
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Well done Patrick!
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Nice shot Patrick. I wonder what one of Amtrak's GEs would look like in a Warbonnet.
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Great job Patrick!
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Well done!
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All the Way with the Santa Fe
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those look amazing!
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Yes one of the truly classic paint schemes. The Santa Fe used it on a parade vehicle for the 1957 railroad exhibition in Chicago and it still exits in private hands with the original paint intact.
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| Posted by on November 12, 2012 | |
Very nice catch, Patrick! Those F7's really pop!
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It's a beautiful picture, and it appears that no expense was spared in the restoration. Absolutely a stunning F7. That said, I have to nitpick about the warbonnet. It's off. Santa Fe F7 warbonnets of that vintage were ovals and did not have straight sides. The stripes would have continued around under the hood ladder, and the two inner lines in the stripes would have terminated in round dots where they intersect the oval, which would have been a little further back, perhaps making those dots visible behind those running lights, which of course are not original. These may be trivial observations, but when a design is off enough to trigger a certain uncomfortable clash between the reproduction and the original, it would seem that someone might have made just a little more effort to duplicate the design rather than to approximate it.
This appears to be the warbonnet of an Alco PA unit rather than an F7. Knickerbocker's design underwent many permutations, but the F7's warbonnet was pretty consistent, and this really doesn't look like it. Keep in mind that the diesel era aesthetic is mostly about paint. Underneath, there was hardly a nickel's worth of visible difference between the actual machines. What we remember, what we search for in classic diesels, is nothing more than a few micron-thick skin of paint. So when we find it and it feels "off," even by a small amount, the effect is a little disconcerting.
Nevertheless, the brilliance of the picture is undaunted by the painter's errors. Beautiful job!
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Shooshie, the Galveston Railroad Museum is anxiously awaiting your check to fund a repaint as you see fit.
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