Quote from: trainman203 on Today at 08:44:10 AMJeffrey, The last steam engines went away when I was almost 9 yr old but not before I got a good solid look at them. I got diverted by model airplanes for about three years and when I returned to trains at 12, this time becoming a serious model railroader, I went to the depot on my bike looking for the steam engines and they were gone. So was the water tank and the water columns along the depot platform where so many times I'd seen the engines taking on water.
So my young railfan days were spent in the world that you got to know a little bit with first generation diesels all over the place.
Out on the main line T&NO which very shortly became the SP, it was commonplace to see black widow F Units in ABBA consists on through freights, sometimes with high nose Geeps mixed in, no low noses of any kind yet, the bloody nose paint was just appearing. Orange and black SW7's and S2's worked the yard and the 2 locals that went out the Midland branch every morning and returned late in the day.
The Missouri Pacific across town was a branch line hub of sorts, the south terminus of a 50 mile branch from the former NOT&M mainline north , which from our town radiated to two subordinate further branches. There was a sheet metal engine house, a wye, a 3 track yard, and a mile-long street running industrial spur, perfect to copy for a layout, but we didn't know that yet. Gray and white Geeps and solid black S2's worked there.
The MP crossed the SP twice, the west one with a manned interlocking tower whose story I've told here in the past in great detail.
So I had a good solid look at that first generation world familiar to older railfans today. But I'm afraid I didn't appreciate it like I should have, because I was crying so hard for the steam engines so very, very recently departed.
So many who grew up around steam didn't appreciate the early diesels. This is why we have a bunch of preserved BigBoys, but surviving or preserved diesels from Lima, Fairbanks Morse and Baldwin are few and far between, with many models now extinct. During the period when they were retired, 1957 to about 1972, very few saw their historical value. Even EMD was not immune with their aggressive trade in program claiming many early units. We almost lost the FT, the diesel that more than any other proved diesels could, and did, do everything. We lost the F2, very few F3s exist, several early E unit models and switchers have all been scrapped.
We have lost so much. It always seems to disappear when we aren't paying attention.