10-09-2009, 10:49 AM
I think I read somewhere as well that the railroads originally bought units like the MD E's, or Alco Pa's for passenger service because of the esthetics of "streamlining." Later on they discovered that the passenger didn't notice and didn't care what was pulling the train or what it looked like as long as it did the job of getting them from point A to point B on time. As a result in the case of the Santa Fe, they had a huge fleet of F-units they used for passenger service, but in the 1950's they bought a bunch of Gp7's and 9's equipped with steam generators to use in dual service. Later on when they replace the F-units in passenger service, they bought cowl units probably for the reasons of crew safety in moving from the locomotive to the other end of the train.