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 David, I'm also modelling Santa Fe in the mid-50's, but in Texas rather than New Mexico. One reason I picked the time and place was the big variety of rolling stock moving stuff around -- as the other writers have demonstrated. One thing that helped me was to pick an exact year of the 1950's. Santa Fe locomotives looked very different in 1959 than they did in 1950. As writers have also said, there is a HUGE amount of literature on the subject. One book I have "Santa Fe Vol 2" (I think) showed a heavy predominance of F units, mainly F3s and F7s. One thing to watch if you're trying for accuracy -- paint schemes. Santa Fe had many paint schemes between the 30's and the 70's (other than the famous Warbonnet) and several of them shared the tracks in the 50's. I have a photo from a book of the Argentine Yard in Kansas City in the mid 50's and it shows F units in 4 different paint schemes. Santa Fe also apparently repainted and renumbered several of the F units. One more note about paint schemes: The large blue and gold "Santa Fe" logo was NOT used in the 50's. It didn't appear until the late 60's (I think) The company was also very conscious about marketing consistency and extremely particular about which locomotives pulled which train. For instance, an FT in Cat Whisker paint would NEVER pull the Super Chief. For locomotives I currently have E6 A-B (Warbonnet) (a 'leftover' from the 30's) F7 A-B (Warbonnet) FT A-B (Cat Whiskers) F3 ABBA (Cigar Band) Baldwin DS4-4-1000 (Zebra stripes) EMD-SW8 (Zebra Stripes) 4-8-4 Steam locomotive (the famous 3751 from BLI -- I couldn't resist keeping one big steam locomotive around) Finally, heres a good link for you: http://www.atsfrr.com/ It's the Santa Fe Historical and Modelling Society. They also have a quarterly publication "The Warbonnet" that has tons of prototype info. You can get back issues too. Also check out http://www.railpictures.net/ You can run a search on ATSF and find all the locomotives of the 50's I'd love to hear more about your progress and trade notes as we get out layouts built. Feel free to e-mail or call when you get a chance. Good luck, Joe Cayton jcayton@opendoorhouston.org
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