Paintings recently sold by Soulis Auctions reveal that GM proposed several different ideas for painting the E6 used for Illinois Central’s City of Miami, which began operating as an all-coach train in December 1940. In retrospect, I don’t think they picked the best design.

Click image for a larger view. Click here to download a 6.5-MB PDF of high-resolution images of these paintings. The size of the images in this PDF is based on the resolution of the original images, not the actual size of the paintings in inches.

The locomotive paint job had to coordinate with the train’s passenger cars, which were to be yellow with a green roof and green skirts with red stripes, a little too thick to be called pinstripes, between the green and yellow bands. Judging from the drawing numbers the above image was the first idea. This would have broadened the bottom green to become dominant on the locomotive nose, interrupted by the vertical red stripes reminiscent of vertical yellow stripes on the Santa Fe Warbonnet. Since IC’s green diamond logo is already green, it got a little lost on the green nose, plus dark green would not be highly visible at night. Continue reading →

The past few weeks have presented art by Leland Knickerbocker, Paul Meyer, Ben Dedek, and Harry Bockewitz, plus one data card whose painting was by Rex A. Prunty. Among images of original artworks provided by Greg Palumbo are three other paintings signed Rex A. Prunty plus I’ve found on-line evidence of a fourth painting.

Click any image for a larger view. Click here to download a 2.9-MB PDF of all three paintings shown here. The size of the images in this PDF is based on the resolution of the original images, not the actual size of the paintings in inches.

Prunty was born in Illinois in 1899 and may have worked for GM Art and Color; his name is on a drawing of a race car from the 1940s. The above F3 locomotive was delivered in November 1948, so by that date he would have been working for EMD Styling. Continue reading →

GM sold 496 E8 locomotives, all but 46 of them being A units. This was down only slightly from the 511 E7s sold. I only have eight data cards for E8s, possibly because GM stopped making such cards.

The signature has been cropped out of this card but Soulis Auctions says the painting was by a GM artist named Rex A. Prunty.

Erie bought 14 E8 A units, the first of which (including number 820) were delivered in January 1951. Continue reading →

GM made more than 3,800 F7s, which was more than twice the number of F3s and in fact more than all other Fs combined. Yet Greg Palumbo has images of just eight data cards for F7s, plus a couple more for FP7s, the passenger variant of F7. It may be that in the early 1950s General Motors stopped making data cards for each series of locomotive it produced.

This card is signed by Ben Dedek.

Wabash received its first batch of F7s, including the three-unit set shown on this data card, in August 1949. It ended up buying a total of 127 of them. Continue reading →

In the years it was in production, GM made several incremental improvements to the F3. By August 1948, those improvements were significant enough that the company internally called locomotives built after that time F5s. However, in public they were still called F3s. I have five data cards or postcards for locomotives that would qualify as F5s.

Ben Dedek’s signature is barely discernible in the center left of the picture.

Louisville & Nashville purchased two A units (numbered 2500 and 2501) and three B units (numbered 2550 through 2552) that were delivered in August 1948. The painting on the card shows them running as a four-unit set, which would have left one of the B units out. Although I can’t find any photographic evidence, I wonder if they were initially run as A-B and A-B-B sets.

This card is signed by Ben Dedek.

The first Santa Fe F3s in freight colors were delivered in October 1948. Santa Fe owned a total of 93 F3s, but most, I believe, were in passenger colors.

This card is signed by Harry Bockewitz.

In October 1948, GM delivered the first of what would be 160 (40 four-unit match-ups) to Southern Pacific. As previously mentioned UP, SP, and Pennsylvania hadn’t purchased any FTs so they played catch-up by buying more F3s than any of the other railroads.

This card is signed by Ben Dedek.

Here’s a postcard-sized ad featuring Lehigh Valley F3s, the first of which were delivered in October 1948. Lehigh ordered 20 in all. The back of the card contains no data and the text is far less technical than is on the regular data cards.

I don’t see a signature but this looks like Ben Dedek’s art work.

This Louisville & Nashville subsidiary received its first F3s in December 1948, just before General Motors switched to production of F7s. Did they experience the same buyer’s remorse felt by people who buy a smart phone or computer just before the manufacturer announces a major upgrade? It’s possible; many railroads that purchased F3s later had them upgraded to F7s.