In the Northeast

[faraway]

One thing to keep in mind which might make the ATSF easier to model is that by the time of the BNSF merger all of the CF7's were sold off to short lines, none left in Santa Fe. The only ones left in "Santa Fe" livery were those used by the LAJ. The LAJ pretty much stopped using the CF7's when the Santa Fe sent the cng units over in the 1990's. They just sent the last of the CF7's to Texas to be sold off this year. That is why I'm going to model the LAJ in the 1980's. I don't care for the CNG units, not nearly as much character as the CF7's.

That is a dilemma for me. I like the CF7 and have a whole family of them (Indiana railroad, Florida Midland and Santa Fe). Santa Fa sold the last one in 1987. Therefor would 1980 the perfect year for my layout if there were not two other points
- I love high cube boxcars and all door boxcars
- I have extreme good years and hate old Athearn RTR drives but love Atlas drives
That does not match with the CF7. My bypass is the invention of the fictional CSTR class 3 railroad to run some CF7 after 1990. However, I prefer Atlas engines when ever possible and when I do a longer session. Athearn RTR is to noisy to be fun. I did convert the motors of a lot of the CF7 but not in the Santa Fe engines only the IND and Florida engines got an costly upgrade. It was also my fault mot to understand the LAJ and Santa Fe early enough to buy LAJ and no Santa Fe.

My layout needs 6 engines to be full operational (the staging yard has 6 tracks). I am currently running 2 P2K Santa Fe GP30, 1 Atlas Santa Fe GP38, 1 Atlas Santa Fe GE B23 and 2 -3 Santa Fe CF7 to fill up. I am waiting for three Atlas Santa Fe GP38 shells to be mounted on Trainman CSS drives to complete the Santa Fe conversion.

The NRE (expected soon...) are the next problem. I have to choose between UP and BNSF. BNSF would be the natural choice but I do not like the new BNSF colors.

ps. My free internet web space provider is adding new hardware and moving lots of data. He failed miserably with his plan and has major outages. His home page (http://rubpeters.ru.funpic.de/) says " Zugriff nicht möglich " / Access impossible... It is hard to complain if it is free....