| Posted by FSWood on January 1, 2014 | |
Always handsome.
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I can't remember how common it was to see FP7's on the real Crescent, but I know this is an awesome photo. The gentleman on the left, in obvious conversation with the engineer, represents a scene I've witnessed many, many times at depots across the land!
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That would be "The Southern Crescent" train #1, #2 was the northbound. Amtrak dropped "Southern" in February 1979. "The Crescent" since runs as #19 & 20 respectively. Southern Railway considered it a "foreign" train after the handover and into the NS merger until around 1989 it was cleared and ran as 819 & 820 for dispatching purposes but always has and all parties agree today to 19 & 20.
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Allan is right, of course. Hope my shortening of the name didn't rankle other Southern fans. Southern has always been my second-favorite road (after hometown Western of Alabama), but we fans sometimes just called this train the Crescent, even way-back when...
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Thanks, Bernie. Pretty hard to take a bad photo of these babies...
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| Posted by on January 3, 2014 | |
David, great photo. Thanks for taking and posting it.
You're right about the name. The old Southern had two New York-New Orleans premier trains: The Southerner via Birmingham and the Crescent via Montgomery. In the late '60s, the Montgomery train (over A&WP/WRofA/L&N) was discontinued and the remaining trains were combined to be renamed Southern Crescent. But, as you say, most railfans simply referred to the combined train as The Crescent, which is a lot easier to say than Southern Crescent. And, as another poster mentioned, after Amtrak assumed its operation on Feb. 1, 1979, it reverted to the former "Crescent" name.
I, too, am surprised to see Southern's FP-7s on this train. It was rare to see them on Trains 1 and 2. Maybe there was an excursion in New Orleans, or perhaps a last-minute E-unit failure.
But was there a better-looking paint scheme? Perhaps there was in the annals of diesel history, but there certainly wasn't anything better looking than these on American railroads in 1975. Mr. Claytor's return to green-and-gold, the Southern herald on the nose, the name "Southern Crescent" on the flank, the green and gold and white and the stripes. Handsome, handsome locomotives.
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