As I developed my 1950s locomotive fleet, I concentrated first on the road freight power. My study of SP locomotive assignments in the 1950s plus text in books on the Shasta-Cascade Route by Signor and Austin and Dill points to a heavy concentration of F7s in that service. Other than the roughly half of the DF-120 class of SD9s initially assigned to the Portland Division, the road freight power was all F7s. The development of a Shasta Route locomotive pool in 1957 and then the Northern Road Freight Pool in 1958 based in Roseville eventually provided more SD9s to Oregon.
Many of us remember Oregon as SD9 territory. While that became true in the 1960s and beyond as more powerful locomotives bumped the SD9s from Southern California mountain grades, the initial uses of SD9s in Oregon were more limited. The DF-120 class were “lightweights”—not ballasted as heavily as succeeding classes of SD9s. Indeed, they were direct descendants of the last order of SD7s which had gone to the Northwestern Pacific. They had steam boilers and large barrel oscillating headlights. Walthers did a fine production run of these in their Proto-2000 series (purchased from Life-Like) and I have had a pair of these in anachronistic service on my railroad complete with Black Widow paint in spite of the otherwise 1984 equipment around them.
With the SD9s largely dismissed from road freight service, my attention turned to my many F7 models. I have SP Black Widow F7s from a variety of manufacturers. Ironically, the Stewart models I expected to be the core of my fleet will have to wait for higher priority projects to clear through the workbench. The Stewart models require hardwiring—the reason I did not equip my railroad with 1950s equipment as I started operations in 2015. That still left many F7 models manufactured in more recent years with relatively straight-forward conversion to DCC operation.
My first blog post on this topic (https://espeecascades.blogspot.com/2026/04/preparing-1950s-loco-fleet-1.html) described my efforts with Walthers Proto F7 models. Those eighteen units form the core of my road freight fleet, hitting all the right details for one of two production classes that formed the core of the Portland Division and later Shasta and Roseville-Northern freight pools. Walthers produced only three unique locomotive numbers for these models, so renumbering was required.
The photo illustrations describing my process use Athearn Genesis units, but the process has been the same regardless of manufacturer. The first step was removal of the factory applied number. Such numbers are pad printed and proved relatively easy to remove using a paint stripper. Some time ago I picked up a bottle of Deluxe Materials “Strip Magic” at one of the Portland area hobby shops, as seen in the photos. I applied this fluid to the number area with a cotton-tipped swab and let it sit for a couple of minutes. I then scrubbed the numbers with the swab, removing the numbers. I blotted the bulk of the fluid off the model with a paper towel and then applied rubbing alcohol per the instructions. This neutralizes the remaining striper fluid. I blotted that initial alcohol application off the model and then applied a fresh coat of alcohol, letting it air dry.
Paint stripper applied to locomotive numbers.
Final result of paint stripping of locomotive numbers. The black acrylic paint pen at the top was used on some models where the base black paint came off as well as the numbers.
As noted in the photo caption, sometimes I stripped off base black paint as well as the lettering gray numbers. This was fixed easily with an acrylic paint pen, seen at the top of the photos. In a few cases I created a mess too close to the handrails which I repaired using a fine-tip Sharpie ™. The finish coat over the subsequent decals and a bit of weathering removed any visual differences from the different paint or ink applicators.
Number decals came from Micro Scale decal set 87-201, the Southern Pacific Black Widow locomotive decal set. I had to use a portion of one of the orange wing sets to repair a wing that was damaged by too much paint stripper left too long on a nearby number (the front nose numbers). I note this to show (a) I make mistakes, but (b) there often are relatively simple fixes available.
Masking applied to locomotives after decal application but prior to finish coat and weathering applications.
Two of the four locomotives that got train numbers in their number boards rather than the common display of the locomotive number as an extra. The units shown are Walthers Proto F7s, fully “tricked out” with lots of fine detail not seen on any of the other manufacturer’s production runs.
With renumbering accomplished followed by finish and weathering, I now have the bulk of my desired F7 road freight fleet ready for service. I got a bit heavy-handed with my airbrush on a few of the units, but that simply reflects the hard service in the tunnels and rock sheds of the Cascade Line these units experience. All of the units have passed through my programming track to standardize their decoder settings. This includes modest sound levels and use of the F5 throttle button to activate the nose Mars light (upper headlight). I currently have 35 of my planned 50 units ready for service. The remaining units await parts—decoders and speakers. Still, the 35 units now ready will more than suffice for start-up operations in the older era.
The initial SP Black Widow F7 fleet. Left to right: Athearn Genesis, Walthers Proto (three tracks), InterMountain (depot track) and Walthers Mainline (depot house track behind the depot).
