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At first, Amtrak had "hand-me-down" units from the railroads, mostly E-8's and E-9's. A small number of F-units were used for a few of the early years too. It would depend on what part of the country you are modeling too, as I remember seeing black Penn Central E-8's on Amtrak trains here in Michigan up until about 1976-77. Amtrak bought it's first new diesels in 1974, the EMD SDP-40F. These were mostly used on the longer distance trains until problems with derailments caused Amtrak to retire them. Athearn makes a pretty close model, their FP-45, which is available in the early Amtrak scheme. The F-40PH units came around about the same time the E-units and SDP's were being retired, about 1977. Also, in the midwest, Amtrak had several sets of "Turbo-Trains" from France. In the '70's "Jouef", a french model railroad firm sold some of these in the states in "HO". I have one of these, and they are not very good runners. Unless you want to attempt a re-powering job, stay clear of these (assuming you can even find one). But again, if you let us know what part of the country you will be modeling Amtrak, we all might be able to provide some more specific advice :) <br />Good luck, and I hope this helps! <br />Todd C.
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