SInce this is Sunday - and the only day of the week where I can spend the
entire day working on my layout, which is what I did - tonight's post will have to be a short one. It'll be about the 7000's, which include the B&O's "other" F units - those inherited from the C&O. You know how you tend to remember where you were and what you were doing when somebody broke some serious news to you, like telling you your job is being eliminated? Well my next story is about where I was when I learned, at age 16, a painful reality of the railroad business.
I was with my friend Joe S., my mentor on the B&O who basically taught me everything I knew about it up to this point. We were pulling into the station parking lot at Point-of-Rocks, MD, and I immediately caught sight of an ex-C&O F7 that was part of a helper consist covering the Old Main Line between PoR and Mount Airy. It was #7054 and had a lot of its original C&O yellow paint on the nose - in fact, it took me a few minutes before I discovered it was a B&O patch job. I asked Joe, "Is that C&O F unit being used in pool service?" "No, that one belongs to the B&O; C&O got rid of all their F units back in 1967." Say WHAT - a railroad
without F units? Perish the thought! Joe continued: "The C&O got newer engines and unloaded all of their F7s on the B&O. In fact, even the B&O is phasing out their F units as they get more GP40's." I felt like I had just been told that a beloved family member had a terminal illness. (I won't bore you with the rest of the conversation...)
Anyway, about 15 months later, as I was coming down the driveway into Riverside, I saw what I thought was
that unit (7054) - it had yellow on the nose. But as I got closer I saw it was NOT the one I saw in Point-of-Rocks, it didn't have as much yellow paint on the sides; in fact, there wasn't a whole lot of
any color paint left on the body,
period:
#7039 pretty much epitomized the Chessie attitude toward their cab units: "Don't waste any paint on 'em cuz they're not worth it anymore." It looked like something one would find at Streigel's or LTE, but she was fueled-up and idling - ready for more mainline use.
Earlier in the summer, during a road trip to the C&O loco shops at Huntington, WV, I saw a more typical hand-me-down F7 wearing the standard Enchantment Blue with a sill stripe: #7061. The only giveaway regarding this unit's heritage - aside from the number - was the dual headlight fixtures. The "double-T" spark arrestors had been replaced by the triangular mushroom covers:
Ironic how an engine discarded by the C&O wound up returning to its native property!
There's only one more slide in my collection with a number between 7000 and 7999, so I'll go ahead and throw that one in here. It's #7405, an SD35:
I'm not really sure what led me to photograph this unit, other than maybe the fact that she was a lone six-axle unit which was rarely seen on this region of the B&O. (OTOH, they were running them in four-unit consists as helpers over Seventeen Mile Grade in WV.) Ultimately, I
did end up painting/decaling a model of this unit when Altas released a decent version of it 40 years later.