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Years ago before I got involved or should say became obsessed with Lionel I always had a HO train under my Christmas tree. Either a Tyco Spirit of 76 or a Life-Like Chessie/B&O. One year both of my locomotives went down on Christmas eve and the only replacement I could find late in the day was a Santa Fe GP 20 at Toys r Us, I only used it one Christmas. Last year I asked my oldest daughter if she remembered those HO trains and she said "I remember a red and silver one with big red letters" Of about 20 years of HO trains she remembers the only one I used once! I guess that war bonnet is a very distinctive and memorable paint scheme.
Its one of the great things about modelling modern American railroads, that you can run almost anything on a layout and still be prototypical !!!.
I,ve always liked the warbonnet scheme,so when I lifted the lid on the Kato box,and saw how good it looked, I knew it was coming home with me.
If you want to see a sort of Warbonnet scheme of the Santa Fe, with orange and green of the Great Northern, take a look at some (not all) of the BNSF units.
Just a quick HI to Ronzzr11 - I'm a Brit too - used to live in Ormskirk not far from you. I live in the U.S.A. now and have just taken up "playing with trains" as my wife calls it.
Night train - it's funny you should say that - she was here by me at the computer and read the post - I don't think she was convinced - she just rolled her eyes and laughed.
I live alone with my cats, I don't have to say anything! Warbonnet, I got to stand 10 feet (off the ballast) and watch the warbonnet "F" units roar by, and the GP 7 and Nines. Occasionally before 1960 I would see 2-10-2's sometimes occasionally 2-8-2's with diesels behind them. Not very often though. Fantastic stuff. I started young. I remember the Blue Ft, F3's and the Warbonnet F7's on passenger trains. Sometimes there would be 4 sections of the Superchief, every 15 minutes another section would roar by.
Our house was only about 25 feet off the ballast. Quite a sight. 25 years later I'd stop in Irwindale and watch a pair of beautiful blue and yellow GP-30's work the Miller Brewery yard, great stuff really handsome locomotives. Now that mainline is 30 miles to the East in a whole different state. Sometimes I see them when I drive.