Is the presence or absence of a front door on the nose of an F unit a matter of factory options that the customer might specify (like... "Phil, make sure you fill in the Nose Door checkbox on that order form, will ya? I left my lunchbox in the Geep the other day and was stuck back behind in the covered wagon without my sandwich for three hours because we don't have nose doors.")?
Or is it down to differences in design among the F3, F7, F9, etc.
Just curious. Thanks,
-Matt
Returning to model railroading after 40 years and taking unconscionable liberties with the SP&S, Northern Pacific and Great Northern roads in the '40s and '50s.
Never seen an AS BUILT F-unit, from FT-103 to FL-9 2059 that did not have a nose door. Some of these "executive" F's of the post F-unit era have had their nose doors sealed, along with the addition of HEP, ditch lights, etc, but not original construction.
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NHTX Never seen an AS BUILT F-unit, from FT-103 to FL-9 2059 that did not have a nose door. Some of these "executive" F's of the post F-unit era have had their nose doors sealed, along with the addition of HEP, ditch lights, etc, but not original construction.
Agreed, I think they all left EMD with nose doors. Some with lights, some without. Some with outside handles, some without. And I doubt any got sealed until pretty modern times, or at least not welded over and made completely disappear.
Sheldon
Thanks, gentlemen.
In recent years some "Executive" F-units were rebuilt for company/excursion service (Norfolk Southern for example) where the railroad removed the front doors, but as noted all F-units had them when they left the factory.
https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/12-ns-to-dispose-of-executive-f-units-other-roster-oddities/
Thanks. Reason I asked: My brother and I were watching a vid of shiny restored F-units of various provenance and sporting various liveries. He commented that it seemed some had front doors and some didn't and wondered if that was a factory option. But it makes sense that some had been removed as these were all recent restorations. I don't recall the video but I believe the roundhouse where they were all gathered and displayed was at a place called Spencer.
EDIT: Here it is:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVS9oUmr4KY
There are both E's and F's in the video. While I see some F's and E's that have had their nose doors "sealed", I also see an E6 and an E5, which I don't think ever had them. I believe nose doors were only factory installed starting with the E7's.
Which brings us to an intereting picture:
and another:
Hey. Those are NOSE DOORS. Well, I don't think they're the kind of doors that are opened by operating employees. I think they are there for construction or heavy maintenance.
I just looked at a lot of pictures of EA's through E6's, and I didn't see anything that would pass for a door UNLESS it was added later. I see L&N did something like that.
But. These are E's. Not F's.
Ed
The Seaboard had a run of EMC E4 passenger engines that had a pneumatically actuated device that actually brought the entire door frame up to a 90° position.
SAL, Raleigh, North Carolina, 1963 by Center for Railroad Photography & Art, on Flickr
Photos of the door extended are difficult to come by. The E3s on the other hand were practically identical without the nose door.
EMC_SAL_E4 by Edmund, on Flickr
Regards, Ed
I would either have to duck under or get down on all fours to enter the cab door. That small entry must have been a headache for crews.
That nose door being discussed was not for crew entry into the locomotive. It was for passing between units in motion-if permitted. Some railroads didn't allow it. Of course out in the middle of no-where, on a cold, windy night in a driving rain............ The nose door was also used to access MU connections on those roads that did not want to mar the esthetics they had paid so much for, with unsightly doors or receptacles flanking the headlight. Crew access to the cab was through the side doors, just aft of the windshield and windows. If one was not paying attention, and tried to enter those doors erect as you would a regular door, when they woke up in the emergency room, they would know exactly how far the ballast was, from the cab floor.
The reason for needing to move between units in motion was 1) percieved unreliability of diesels at the time, so someone would have to tend to an ailing engine until the end of the run (some lines assigned a trained maintainer to the crew) 2) the need to manually adjust auxilliaries such as cooling fans. EMD didn't have thermostatic control until the F2/F3, in every one of a 1000 or so FT's the cooling fans had to be manually controled, which meant the fireman traveling between units
I can remember going back from the trailing FL9 to the coaches a few times on the commuter runs from Danbury to Grand Central. But that was a LONG time ago... late 1979...
In the movie, "Runaway Train" the door was stuck. They were trying to get to the lead unit to shut her down.