Finally a good photo of some U25Bs in the Frisco Archives. I am an unabashed U25B fan and it is nice to see some pictures of them when they were at their prime. I am especially fond of the high hoods. Tom G.
I am just the opposite, Tom. Never cared for the high hoods, but thought the low hood model was the cat's meow.
Always thought they were interesting in that they were odd. Sort of remind me of a caricature of "Moby Dick" the whale. I would NOT have enjoyed running them with their 3 foot long throttles. For a "big motor", they had poor lateral visibility. The lateral visibility in GP7s was not all that great either, but not as bad as I recall. Still, though interesting for what they were. I can certainly understand their appeal to the modeling world. Andre
I do not really care if the company or enginemen did not like them or if the throttles were awkward, ectara. I am a model railroader and I just like the looks of them from the the modeling perspective. Tom G.
Well please pardon the crap out of me! Glad I did not taint your modeling world with my experiential observations or musings. I shall try to refrain from doing so concerning your topics in the future. Andre
No problem Andre. I know the U25Bs were not very successful, I just like them as models. I know there are several members here that had to cope with the prototypes. I never had any experience with the prototypes and it looks I will not with any models either. I just liked the looks of them, their size, bulk, etc. Tom G.
I liked the high hood U25Bs because they were unique, and introduced a new, state of the art locomotive to the industry. Yes, like many brand new types, they were full of bugs. Bottom line, though, I thought they suffered from a double dose of ugly. The following low nose U25Bs looked much better, as did the later U-boats. I always thought the UP high nose U25B units looked better in their paint scheme that ours did in the black and yellow. Anyway, they all chugged nice coming up a steep hill! K
My Man! I wonder why Springfield did not adopt the U25B "scare stripes" pattern as the system standard? To my eyes, it is perfect in the Mandarin orange and white scheme. Thank you EMD "35 Series" demonstrators!
