Greetings -
When the NYC FTs were first released in '44 they had the short-lived "cat whisker" striping on the front nose. (Would love to scratch-paint that on a pair of NYC FT A-Bs sometime.) If I understand correctly the E7s were the first NYC diesels to be released with the familiar lightning stripe, sometime in '47(?).
Does anyone know when the FTs were repainted using the lightning stripe? I bought a lightning-striped Stewart FT A-B kit off eBay for $50 this morning and I wanted to find out what year that paint scheme would be appropriate. I was guessing either '48 or '49.
I did some googling and got on the Fallen Flags website but didn't find anything definitive. I appreciate the help...
Tom
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
Tom,
I will dig through my NYC books this evening when I finish moving for the day (Im moving).
Andrew
What I read was... from other people.
They were repainted into the lightning strikes with the introduction of the F3 and F7.
So between 1948 and 1952 I would say.
The so called cat whiskers were very early introduction of the lightning stripes in 1939.
Amtrak America, 1971-Present.
The first E-7s were delivered in 1945 in the first lightning stripe scheme, matching the streamlined 1938 20th Century Limited cars (light gray body, dark gray band through the windows) except for one A-B set that was black with white striping. The colors were reversed in 1948 IIRC, dark gray body with light gray through the window area. The E-units and any passenger F-units in the earlier scheme were then repainted to match. That scheme is what most people mean when they say "lightning stripe scheme", it's the scheme Walthers used on their HO 20th century engines and cars. Since NYC's FTs were freight engines, they would have been repainted into the freight version (black and gray) of the lightning stripe scheme...as noted, the 1948-50 period sounds logical.
Here's a pic from Fallen Flags of NYC #1601 with the "cat whisker" scheme:
The date of the photo is given as "9/21/49". The FT B-unit and opposing A-B units have the lightning stripe. While #1601 hadn't been repainted at the time of the picture above, other FTs apparently were.
Another interesting note is that my Stewart FT A-B (which just arrived this morning) has two rear side steps rather than one. That, at least, is any easy fix using a pair of nippers, a file, and a little black paint. The B-unit did come with two rear side steps, as pictured above.
The NYC pic shows FTs basically as designed and first built, in A-B or A-A drawbar-connected sets. The A unit had steps front and rear for the front and rear side doors; the B unit had the same door steps but also rear steps and handholds for switchmen to ride on if necessary. Generally if any F-unit had both steps for the doors and end steps for a switchman, it meant that unit had couplers at both ends.
IIRC the Stewart FTs all come with the 'extra' steps; some railroads did get FT units with a jerry-rigged coupler in place of the drawbar and so had those steps. As noted, if you're modelling a railroad that used drawbars, it's easy to remove the steps - certainly easier than it would have been if Stewart left them off, and modellers whose favorite railroad used the steps had to try to add them.