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Additional (probably marginally useless) information: Specific example. Katy/Frisco never owned any E7B's (for, for that matter, any B-unit E's at all). Katy had a set of E7A's for the Texas Special and Frisco had 3 sets of E7A's--1 for the TS and 2 for the Meteor. They ran them back to back, as intended, until late in the game. In fact Katy had no EB units for pax service--only F7B's and F9B's, and in the later days the B's got sandwiched between 2 E's, 2 FP7's or an E and an FP7. Once they got the E8's, single units showed up a lot on the stub trains to FTW and HOU, including the TS E7's, which had lost their TS lettering but still had the SS fluted sides. Frisco I think also soloed some of the E's at various times, including on the Meteor. Frisco, of course, converted their 6 E7's to the racehorse decor like the E8's, and took the SS off the sides and put it on some modernized HW cars for the TS and Meteor. The justification for more than one unit goes to both train length and terrain. On a relatively flat run like we have in parts of TX, an E can do just fine with 5-6 LW cars. You'd never get away with that on the PRR, B&O or C&O in the mountains. Example--I was in the Rio Grande Valley (flat as the proverbial pancake) the other day and UP was pulling about 100 auto racks with one 4400 HP unit. Seen the same thing on CSX/L&N on the gulf line and of course on everybody in FL. The justification for pax B unit F's on ATSF and a couple others(TNO also did this) was that they didn't buy FP7's with the water tank capacity, the A unit F's they had were without steam generators, so there would always be at least an A-B F unit combination. ATSF ran solo E's and PA's all over TX on their stubs (like 115/116, 75/76/77/78, etc). TNO and SSW soloed PA's all the time as the trains got shorter. When Russell emaciated the premium Sunbeam (TX Daylight) in 1955, the remaining 5 car train got a single PA until it came off. In fact SSW 107/108 to DAL were 4-6 HW HE and an Am Flyer chair car (or occasionally two) pulled with a single RS3! After SP consolidated and started running Western Lines power east past ELP, a solo E (TNO didn't have any) would occasionally show up. And, of course, RI ran solo E's and all kinds of other combinations until the end (Go the other way--8 or 9 E's lined up every which way on the Sunset-Golden State or GS-RMR in the mid to late 1960's). When the little Rockets got too big for the TA's that's what they usually got--a solo E. The original MP Eagle was a single E unit. So was the postwar Sam Houston Zephyr when the 9901/9902 came off. Hope this is helpful.
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