More from Wally:
--------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Wally Abbey <wabbey@R...>
To: SANTAFE@c...
Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2001 11:39:54 -0700
Subject: FTs vs. FSs
Message-ID: <p04320400b6cd5e358ca2@[166.93.40.169]>
References: <db.113c498e.27d88e76@a...>
A little perspective, if you will permit me, please.
It is not true that Santa Fe's had no FTs. I've seen the
1,350-horsepower models termed FTs in EMD's famous little book that
listed the active EMD locomotives of all railroads, including the
Santa Fe. The model designation FT was used by Electro-Motive on
locomotive specifications and in other documents as early as 1945 and
perhaps earlier. From what we can make out of documentable history,
EMC's (and EMD's) Engineering Department called these units Model Fs
and the Sales Department called them FTs or some variation thereof.
In the unit roster of the 100 class that'll be in my book, which is
built from original EMD records, the designation will be Model F
except for perhaps the last eight units, which these records called
Model FTs (as I recall without looking it up). But to a great extent
the significance of such model designations is the product of
latter-day railfans more than it is the product of factory or
railroad practice, at least in Electro-Motive's early days.
I don't mean to sound overly skeptical, but I'll have to have
somebody show me an Electro-Motive document that defines "FT" as
meaning a given unit horsepower before I'll believe that that's what
it means. Hearsay doesn't prove anything.
The situation with the freight locomotives is triply complicated, at
least. Early on, the Santa Fe as far as I can recall almost never
used EMC or EMD model designations (or any manufacturer's, for that
matter) to describe its diesel-electrics. It used its own class
numbers--100 class, 2 class, 50 class, etc. (Here too how the engines
were described sometimes depended on who was doing the describing.
Around the Chicago diesel shop in the summer of 1944 the 2-class
locomotives were commonly called "201As" by the mechanics who
maintained them; the 11-class engines were called " 567s.") Then, in
later years, after all the guys who had invented freight
dieselization had all retired and/or died, EMD itself now and then
adopted railfan-created terminology! (Don't look to the badge plates
for help. On the badge plates, all units types were "0-4-4-0."
There's a similarity here with the way the Santa Fe adopted
"warbonnet." I think I know where that term came from. It was
originally in some written description of Leland Knickerbocker's
styling of the 2 class. It was not an official term. It doesn't
appear on the design patent. (Andy Sperandeo, when I was on the
Trains staff in the early 1950s there was a single sheet in Trains's
Santa Fe [or maybe its EMD] reference file that quoted this
paragraph, unfortunately without attribution.No headline or anything;
just the paragraph. Maybe it's still there. The paragraph described
the "warbonnet" look of the styling and how the feathers trailed back
along the bases of the units. I would guess that the description came
from either Santa Fe or EMD early publicity.) But it wasn't until
much later, perhaps at the time that Mike Haverty caused that styling
to be reborn, that the term "warbonnet" became a proper noun. That's
all speculation, but it's what the known facts point to.
Back to the freight units. That 1947 document came out of EMD's Field
Service Department, which was an arm of the Sales Department if it
wasn't a separate department altogether, as I recall. It has the
effect of distinguishing units of the original freight model that had
type E couplers at both ends from units that had a coupler at one end
and a drawbar at the other. Recall, the "Model F Standard" locomotive
was a cab section coupled to a trailing section by a drawbar. The
term "section" is far more appropriate for these beasts than is
"units," because neither of the two parts of the locomotive could be
operated without the other. Neither section was wholly independent of
the other. The batteries for both were in the A section. The A
section couldn't be coupled to anything in regular service except a B
section. The B section had no batteries and lacked a coupler at one
end. As I've said, the FT was conceived not as a four-section
locomotive but as a two-section locomotive. See my previous post on
why many four-section FTs were drawbarred together throughout.
That's the way most FTs were built and usually numbered, as
two-section jobbies. Many roads, of course, coupled two "Model Fs"
back to back, and some later found that this was an overly powerful
locomotive. (Thus the two-section FT coupled to a single F2 or F3 on
these roads.) The Santa Fe and a few other roads, on the other hand,
had EMD build them a significantly modified version of the "Model F."
It had batteries in both sections, couplers at both ends of both
sections, a somewhat different frame construction at the ends where
the drawbar would have been, a hostler control in the B unit (now we
can call these devices units instead of sections), and some other
changes.
One effect of the resolution of the First Diesel Case, about which I
wrote earlier, was that both the Engineers and the Firemen agreed
that any number of locomotive units that were operated from one
position by one man (that is, one man from each union) would
constitute one locomotive. With that agreement, the labor problem
created by coupling two standard FTs together was resolved. There was
no more need to substitute a drawbar for the couplers between the B
ends of a four-unit consist. Some railroad that had bought standard
Model Fs (A sections plus B sections permanently drawbarred together)
saw the opportunity to make the two sections totally independent of
each other. Southern Railway I think was especially active in this
rebuilding. EMD published information on what parts were needed to
turn a B section into a B unit and to modify the rear end of an A
section into an A unit. I have the catalog sheets but unfortuntely I
don't know their date. I wouldn't be surprised to find that it was
close to the date of that Field Service bulletin.
Evidently, the opportunity to convert dependent FT sections into
independent FT units created enough of a "new" type of locomotive
that EMD undertook to redefine its 1,350-horepower models to reflect
the differences essentially in how the pieces of a locomotive could
be fastened together. Thus was created the designation "FS"--and if I
say that "FS" stood for "free-standing" I'll start a whole new trend
and shoot myself in the foot. So I'll forever deny that that's what I
said.
None of this really affected the Santa Fe's 100 class, which, by the
new definition, had been "FSs" all along but which had been called
"FTs" from the inception of that term until EMD redefined the model
designation. I agree that not many people noticed that they'd done
it. By the time the designation appeared the model was out of
production.
If anyone would like to pass this post along to other lists that deal
with diesels, please feel free to do so. Maybe somebody out there has
a copy of one or both of the two documents I dearly need: the report
of Santa Fe's Test Department on the first test runs of the 100
between Argentine and San Bernardino and then between Chicago and the
Coast in very early 1941; and the Field Service bulletin that the
1947 "FS" bulletin superseded.
Many thanks.
Wally
I misspoke. EMD's Field Service News introducing the terminology "FS"
was dated December 8, 1951. This bulletin superseded one dated in
1947.
Wally
--
Wally Abbey
781 McCarthy Boulevard
Pueblo, CO 81005-9704
719.564.2210
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