Intermountain Railway Southern Pacific Santa Fe GE Tier 4 Gevo

In early 1983 two large Western railroads, Southern Pacific and the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe sought to combine as a single railroad. Their efforts were unexpectedly met with resistance and inevitably a negative decision from the ICC. In mid 1986 the Santa Fe Southern Pacific Corp. was forced to sell off the Southern Pacific. Not after dozens of locomotives had already been repainted for both ATSF and the SP into the new “Kodachrome” scheme. Modelers and enthusiast sometimes reflect about “What if?” the proposed SPSF merger actually happened. Coming up 40 years, the SPSF has not been forgotten. Adapting real railroad common practices, including an interesting nod to historical heritage railroads, we developed a plausible alternate reality. Assuming the Southern Pacific Santa Fe integrated ET44AC Tier 4 GEVOs to remain compliant to EPA emission targets. An additional opportunity is an SPSF heritage paint scheme, commemorating the historical railroads that made up both merging railroads. Following the practice of numbering the locomotive to an important year, in this alternate timeline, 1986 would be the year SPSF was officially merged. For SPSF #1986 the conductor side long hood represents the Santa Fe predecessor railroads and the engineer side represents the predecessor and subsidiary railroads for the Southern Pacific. The very first experiments of the Kodachrome scheme were with white lettering. Other details such as SP style roman road numbers reflect on a time when SPSF was repainting locomotives in a manner to add either “SP” or “SF” after the merger was approved. Kodachrome was modified over the years leading to the ICC decision. Changes to the color of the letters on the long hood and nose stripes. Officially the font of the road numbers were to match the Santa Fe’s including the size. InterMountain adapted these features to the GE ET44AC. Early SPSF rosters depicted numbering for GE locomotives to begin with the 8000 series. Assuming the SPSF acquired ES44AC GEVOs in large quantities, and populating the higher numbers meant that the new Tier 4 GEVOs would most likely be replacing earlier retired and displaced GEs in the 8500 series.