If it was in 1980, I was very young when BN bought SLSF but I can certainly remember seeing rolling stock with Frisco lettering and logos. However, I don't ever remember seeing a Frisco locomotive. Did BN repaint them as soon as they bought SLSF? Since I ocassionally still see the green BN units (usually with SF added) 14 years after the merger, I find it odd that I don't remember any orange and white Frisco locomotives from 80-82 or even later. I'm pretty sure I would remember seeing them during the early 80's if they hadn't already been repainted. Why would BN go to the trouble of repainting the locomotives so soon and not the rolling stock? Come to think of it, I remember BN cabooses well but I've never seen a Frisco caboose or diesel locomotive in person. (I grew up on the B'ham sub) Any thoughts?
I too have wondered this. At first they did the normal thing witch was to patch the units. The patch was black BN number on the side over the SLSF number with BN under it in black letters. But I am yet still unclear as to why they where so quick to repaint all the locomotives and cabooses.
Me too. It happened so fast. The orange and white didn't linger for ten years like those Warbonnets have.
I plead guilty of quickly losing interest bigtime in the Fort Smith area when the BN took over. After BN, I got out and shot some slides on the endangered Montreal branch (remnant of the Central Sub)... and maybe one or two slides of the also endangered and truncated Arthur Sub to Poteau, OK... but that's about all of it. Guess I should have been a dutiful "historian" and done a much better job of getting the BN years chronicled... but it just wasn't the same. The "magic" was gone. Odd thing is... I still don't care that I missed a lot of the BN years in/around Fort Smith. Andre
