Southern Pacific F7A #6436
San Jose, 1968 & 1969
SP Pages

When Wx4 staff first looked at the back cover of Joe Strapac's Southern Pacific Historic Diesels - EMD Freight F Locomotives (we love the book Joe!), we saw an old acquaintance, the #6436, in color. Cool!

By the late 1960's, SP's freight F7's each seemed to take-on a personality of their own, and the '36 was no exception, with the white "SP" painted over its orange nose stripes.

The first four photos below come from early 1969, the year that SP retired the 1951-built locomotive. The last photo dates to mid-1968. We want to see models, people!


STOP THE PRESSES! DATELINE: three hours after uploading the rest of the page
Moonbeam the Cleaning Lady & Karmic Councillor Finds Missing Negative Under Month-Old Taco Bell Enchirito!

As staff was composing this page, we could have sworn that we had taken a 3/4 right-side photo along with the photo at page bottom, but when we couldn't find evidence of same, we chalked the matter up to age-damaged neurons. But HA! Here it is (below)! We were so inspired that we decided to include with it an 1800 pixel Wx4 HumongoPhoto, AND at no extra charge, we're now furnishing same for the above photo as well! Just click on the photos.
We originally included the below photo because we thought that we had no other engineer's side photo, but of course, we do. We didn't think that you'd mind if we kept this June 21, 1968 shot pasted to the page anyway. Click on the photo for one of Wx4's HumongoPhotostm, and while you're at it, take a gander at the 6213's roof - that's an early F3 high fan shroud above the rear porthole (the 1949-built 6213 was the oldest freight F7A on the property at the time, BTW).

Also note that TNO #369, a late seies F7 built in mid-1953 does not have the extra vent ahead of a repositioned front portal, and of course it was painted in red and scarlet. Yup, by the end of their careers, they all had their eccentricities and probably should have been given names instead of numbers; for this trio, how about Bob, Lois and Phil?

Later on, Wx4 will host a bunch more F unit photos, all in stunning black and white.