Does any one have the time frane that one might expect to still find Southern's double Striped diesel Passenger scheme in service. I know that E6 locos and E7's (until the new 1949's) came this way but, how long could one have reasonably expected to find these in service before the repainting would have replaced them with the simplified green scheme.(ex. would it be reasonable to find say 2905 with the double stripes in 53 or 56?)My guess would be that they were repainted by the very early fifties.

-- Roy Willliams (sluggo47@bellsouth.net), May 11, 2000

Answers

Roy, I believe you are correct about the double-stripe scheme disappearing around 1950. All of the photos of that scheme in my collection carry a 1940-something date... I have no photos of double-stripe diesels from 1950 or later.

-- Tom Alderman (Topa12283@aol.com), May 12, 2000.

I agree with Roy. I believe the new simplified green scheme came in with the F-7 orders. I have many photos of F-3s and early E units (including the 1947 E-7s) with the early paint scheme, but nothing from the 1950s.

When changing a paint scheme, most railroads repainted freight locomotives only as they came due for shopping. However, in this era, the railroads were much more image conscious, and passenger trains were kept uniform (matching locomotives). I suspect that you would have a hard time finding a 1951 photo of a Southern locomotive with the double stripes.

-- Tom Warne (twar@chevron.com), September 05, 2001.

The simplified paint scheme debuted on the 1949 E7s and all the F7s. It became the offical scheme in the spring of 1949. Unlike the transition to the black scheme after October 1958, which took several years, they wasted no time in repainting the locos.

-- Larry (ljpuckett@starpower.net), September 07, 2001.

Tom--you also would ahve been really hard pressed to find one still in the as delivered black and imitation aluminum paint scheme after 1950. From everything I ahve seen it appears that the SRY paint shops must have been working overtime during 1949-50 to get all those disels repainted--Larry

-- Larry Puckett (ljpuckett@starpower.net), March 19, 2002.