Can someone tell me about any FT's in green such as those put out by Stewart Hobbies. I just bought an A - B set and would like to know how this was used by the RR if at all. Frieght or Passenger, A-B, A-B-B-A set up and what years.

Thanks to all

Scott

-- Scott Adcock (scottadcock@bellsouth.net), May 15, 2002

Answers

Scott, The FT's were originally delivered in black paint, but were repainted into the green scheme beginning around 1950. They were primarily used on freight trains on the Southern. Some roads such as SAL occasionally used them in secondary passenger service, and a few roads such as Santa Fe actually had FT's equipped for regular passenger service. But Southern had plenty of E-units along with FP7s and passenger-equipped F3s to handle the passenger load. Photos suggest that the A-B-B-A sets were still common throughout the 1950s; however, individual units did appear occasionally within lashups of newer F-units, and occasional F3s and F7s found their way among the FT lashups as well. I do not recall seeing any photos of FTs wearing the post 1957 black paint with the large gold lettering (except the 6100 in the St. Louis museum). This would suggest that most of the FTs went to scrap in the green paint, or were among the few that were rebuilt with F3-style grills and then painted black, such as Georgia & Florida 801.

-- Tom Alderman (Topa12283@aol.com), May 21, 2002.