09-14-2010, 07:26 PM
There may have been some financial reason why the S.P. kept the SSW instead of merging it into the S.P., but I don't know what it is. As far as I know the S.P. continued to have a percentage of their new equipment purchases painted in SSW "Cotton Belt" livery right up until either the DRGW bought them or at the time of the U.P. takeover. When the U.P. took over the company, there were still a lot of units in the SSW livery. As far as I know the SSW never operated in California until after the S.P. took over the company. I think I typically saw 25% of the S.P. power units used out here in So Cal were in the SSW livery. I'm presuming that was probably true system wide, especially true of the latest road power.