F-Unit photos - Trains (2024)

Atlanta & St. Andrews Bay
The 82-mile Atlanta & St. Andrews Bay, categorized as a Class I from 1947 until the mid-’50s, owned just one F unit, F3A 1501. The “Bay Line” bought it to power the daily passenger train between Dothan, Ala., and Panama City, Fla., where it is picured in the late 1940s. When the unit entered service in 1947, the road became the second Class I (after Texas Mexican) to become all-diesel. M. B. Cooke photo

Santa Fe
With 910 freight and passenger units, Santa Fe had more F’s than any other road. Four are at Ancona, Ill., on April 26, 1969, as F7A 308 and a B unit pose with a Chicago–Pekin fantrip on the Pekin Branch as another A-B set passes with the westbound Grand Canyon. Jim Neubauer photo

Baltimore & Ohio
B&O was the biggest F-unit owner in the East, with 358 FTs, F3s, and F7s. The F’s ruled B&O’s heavily graded West End (of the Cumberland Division) in the 1950s and early ’60s. In a 1954 view from an E unit westbound near Salt Lick Curve, F7-powered coal (left) and merchanise trains approach. William E. Hopkins photo

Bangor & Aroostook
Maine’s potato-hauling Bangor & Aroostook bought a baker’s dozen F units, nine F3As and four F3Bs. Within a couple of years, BAR sold the B units to the Pennsy, but some of the A’s lasted into the 1980s, and two have become celebrities in preservation, being painted in Jersey Central and, in 2010, Lackawanna colors. BAR photo

Burlington Route
CB&Q’s substantial F-unit fleet began with 32 cab-booster FT sets totalling 64 units. Here the first four pose for a dramatic night image. CB&Q photo

Canadian National
Canada’s railroads were slower to dieselize than those in the U.S., so there were no FTs or F2s north of the border, and only six F3s: four cabs and two boosters on Canadian National. CN 9000 and 9001 arrive Montreal in January 1949, when they were just a few months old. Alan Toohey photo

Canadian Pacific
An FP7-F7B-FP7 team brings Canadian Pacific’s eastbound Dominion into Banff, Alberta, circa 1960. Jim Neubauer photo

Rock Island
F2A No. 48 and an FT A-B set cross the Illinois Central at Mills Tower in Iowa City, Ia., with freight train 911 in Feburary 1953. Other roads such as Boston & Maine and Burlington bought F2As to combine with two FTs to form a three-unit, 4,050 h.p. locomotive. Douglas R. Stevens photo

Rio Grande
Four F7s and a GP9 are reflected in the Colorado River as they pass through Glenwood Canyon, Colo., with an eastbound freight in October 1960. George Speir photo

Lackawanna
An A-B-B-A set of F3s and F7s pulls hard with Lackawanna freight BH-4 on the climb east out of Scranton, Pa., in September 1958. The second unit wears the livery intially carried only by DL&W’s passenger cab units. John J. MacDonald photo

Georgia
One of the Georgia Road’s three FP7s curves into Augusta (Ga.) Union Station with train 2 from Atlanta on Aug. 10, 1960. The Georgia owned one other F unit, an F7 for freight. W. F. Beckum Jr. photo

Gulf, Mobile & Ohio
Forty F3s (32 cabs, 8 boosters) helped 2,800-mile GM&O become the first major railroad to dieselize. Here a new A-B-A set heads a freight 5 miles south of Bloomington, Ill., in September 1947. Paul Stringham photo

Great Northern and Northern Pacific
The two northern Hill Lines roads favored F units for their transcontinental streamliners, as evidenced at Great Northern’s Minneapolis station on May 10, 1967, where F7s on GN’s Empire Builder (left) and F9s on Northern Pacific’s North Coast Limited prepare to head west. Howard S. Patrick photo

Milwaukee Road
At Palmyra, Wis., on the Milwaukee Road’s orginal line west across the state, FP7 105A, an F7B, and an E9B lead a passenger extra carrying members of the Wisconsin National Guard bound for Fort Lewis, Wash., on Oct. 26, 1961. Jim Scribbins photo

Monon
Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville, a.k.a. the Monon and “The Hoosier Line,” had 30 F units: 24 F3As and 6 F3Bs. Two-unit F3A set No. 84 (connected by couplers but carrying a single road number, a system the Monon soon abandoned) stand at Crawfordsville, Ind., with the Louisville–Chicago Tippecanoe in 1948. Dick Howell photo

New York, Ontario & Western
The impoverished “O&W” looked to EMD switchers and F units for salvation, becoming, in 1948, one of the first Class I’s to acheive full dieselization. FT sets 804 and 601 depart Middletown, N.Y., with freight BC-3 in June 1946. R. R. Malinoski photo

Reading
Two of the Reading’s eight FP7s — queens of the road’s diesel fleet — make 70 mph down the Jersey Central main line with the Philadelphia-bound Crusader in August 1951. Ed Theisinger photo

Soo Line
FP7 2500 idles with Soo Line No. 17, the Chicago–Duluth Laker, during the train’s Waukesha (Wis.) station stop one damp evening in December 1958. Now owned by the Lake Superior Railroad Museum, the 2500 hauls tourist trains out of Duluth. Jim Scribbins photo

Western Pacific
WP F7s head out across the mainline trestle at Keddie, Calif., with an eastbound freight in 1962. “The Feather River Route” had 111 F units of models FT, F3, F7, and FP7; four F7s achieved celebrity status by working into the 1980s. Don Sims photo