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LPBrennan — Seaboard Air Line Q-3

Published: 2010-07-22 01:55:24 +0000 UTC; Views: 2363; Favourites: 36; Downloads: 75
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Description As I mentioned, the Seaboard was the other railroad in the Orlando of my youth- in 1955. Again, no steam by then, but as I grew older and studied the ACL and SAL, I discovered what interesting rosters they had- and utterly different approaches. The ACL was rich, staid and conservative. Until it bought the R-1 4-8-4s, it ran almost everything with Pacifics and Ten-Wheelers! After other railroads had begun light-weight streamlined trains, the Coast Line was still building- in their own shops in Rocky Mount, North Carolina- the heaviest steel coaches ever. They rode better.
Seaboard was a poor man, caught between ACL to the east and the Southern to the west, with a single-track main that roller-coasted through the Carolinas. SAL had a greater variety of locomotives, including the first high-speed, articulated freight engines- its 2-6-6-4 R-1 class, which were sold to the B&O (as were the first articulateds twenty years earlier). ACL never fooled with them. (The N&W developed the 2-6-6-4 into the phenomenal A, of course!)
SAL bought Russian Decapods and used lots of Mikados for freight. A wide-spread example is the Q-3- a very light Mike, actually- from the side it was a skinny, snake-like engine- but from the front! Man- those airpumps mounted on the smokebox gave these light engines an amazingly business-like appearance, and their weight allowed them on almost any SAL line to handle whatever freight they could pull there.
So at the same time I painted the ACL R-1, I put acrylic on canvas for the Q-3.
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Comments: 3

befuntoons [2019-06-22 05:06:53 +0000 UTC]

I always thought these locomotives where homely.But as it turns out they where bigger than I thought.And they also had a boster to give it extra pull.There is an old railroad film about the seaboard.It shows E6 and Q3 locomotives.

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SynthaRoboto [2016-05-02 04:23:17 +0000 UTC]

Holy crap... You are amazing at painting

👍: 0 ⏩: 0

Rockyrailroad578 [2014-05-11 22:14:56 +0000 UTC]

Weird Mike that!

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