Athearn GP7 Project Poll

You are all welcome -- I'm happy to share these memories. In the photo of 512, I'm standing on the Garrison Avenue Bridge over first the railroads then the Arkansas River with the other side being Oklahoma. The three tracks in the foreground are Frisco with the track nearest the camera being the station track, the station being immediately behind me in the photo. The center of the three tracks was where. in the days when 704/710 still went to Paris, the Pullman, snack car, and additional baggage/express car would have been spotted prior to arrival of the passenger train. Beyond the poleline the tracks are Missouri Pacific. The headlight seen directly over the cab of the second unit is from the MoPac SW-1 that was their Fort Smith switcher. The brick building with the "Eagle Merchandise" cars in front of it was the MoPac's freighthouse. To the right of it, in the background, stands Belle Starr's cathouse which still stands today, having been restored and open to the public as a museum.

There's not a whole lot to be said for getting older, but one is to be able to share memories. I realize that me relating this to folks like Ethan and Murphy is the same as someone having told me, when I was their age, stories of the Frisco in the '20's or even 10's. I think we all have a responsibility to pass these things on.

Gordon
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Some of the talk on this thread has been about fuel tanks. Information from the Frisco issued "Diesel locomotives, vest pocket diagrams" of May, 1965 list the following info for the Geeps.
#500-514, 557-563, 565-572 and 598-599 show 1700 gallons of fuel oil. The listing shows no steam generators for these units at this point in time.
#515-549, 556, 573-597 and 619-632 show 1200 gallons of fuel oil. Again, no steam generators for these units.
#600-618 show 800 gallons of fuel oil. It shows these units carried 800 of boiler water as well.

If anyone has an older version of this booklet, perhaps they could provide info as to capacities. I would wonder if perhaps some of the previous steam generator equiped units had their water tanks replace with larger fuel tanks.

 

It's just a mockup for now, but Miss Laura's sits between the yard and station in Fort Smith on The Central Divisions. Of course the track plan is extremely mangled from the prototype and the bridge isn't there yet. Someday.
I've only heard this called "Miss Laura's" in the Fort Smith media. My mother helped strip paint when it was being restored by the local historical group in the 70's.

 

Steve

You are absolutely correct and I realize that I was simply perpetuating an old wives' tale regarding Belle Starr's, or at least her daughter's, connection with that building. The fact is that it was built several years after Belle's death and while briefly a commercial hotel it quickly became the leading brothel, run for may years by Laura Ziegler, in Fort Smith and remained so for almost fifty years. Sorry for the bad "history".

Gordon

 

To All:

It has been established that the B&Y paint scheme is the one preferred by 75% of you. Therefore we will proceed to recommend to Athearn to do that first. Since I personally don't model that era and profess no expertise in it, I have chosen a small group of forum members who do to research the various versions and schemes and get back with me as to specific variations. I found it interesting that Athearn has just announced a ATSF Zebra Stripe version in 4 road numbers of the dual purpose variety with the tall stacks.

http://www.athearn.com/Products/Default.aspx?ProdID=ATHG62433

This goes to show that Athearn will go to any extreme in their Genesis line to produce unique and accurate models.

I plan to keep everyone updated and if anyone has any issues with how I have chosen to do this, please feel free to send me a PM.

 

Yeah, then you need to beat the online auction "bushes" for some of those Santa Fe mixed train combines produced by Pecos River in the 80's to go with them.

R Bob