Hi, it's only been four months since I last posted. I swear, I need to keep better tabs on this thing. Anyway, I purchased a brand-new (kind of) locomotive at the Train Fair on Sunday. An undecorated Proto 2000 E8A.
I love the way this thing looks, and it hasn't even been painted yet. When I do get it painted, it is going to look like this..jpg)
This is Metra E8 #515. It is ex-Chicago and Northwestern #5029-B. The locomotive has since been retired by Metra and was held up in Silvis, IL, at National Railway Equipment's parts facility until recently. It has now found a new home (and new paint scheme) at the Arizona Eastern Railroad as 6070, painted in a scheme that pays homage to the Southern Pacific's "Black Widow" scheme of old that used to grace F-units and early Geeps. All of Southern Pacific's E-units were painted in a Daylight scheme. However, I have seen a couple of pictures on-line of E-units painted into Southern Pacific's final paint scheme before being absorbed into the Union Pacific. This is known by railfans as the "nose-bleed" shceme.
I have always been quite fond of this locomotive. My dad owns a VHS tape that features the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad during the flood of 1993. One of the consequences of the flood was that Amtrak's California Zephyr was forced to detour over the Northwestern until the flooding subsided. Because the Amtrak F40PHs that ran the train were not equipped with the proper cab-signal equipment that would have been compatible with the equipment on the line, the Northwestern had to dig up a trio of Metra E8s, which, like I said, were ex-Northwestern units. #515 is the first E8 that is seen in the video, leading train #5 (headed for San Francisco) through De Kalb, Illinois, and I have loved it ever since. It had a beautiful paint scheme, and a stellar Leslie RS5-T horn. Unfortunately, the horn has since been removed and is now in a private collection. Now, I don't know what kind of horn the locomotive has. I've seen a video of it and heard the horn, but it is so badly tuned that it is hard to pick out what it is.
