I've just recently become interested in model railroading; my two prime interests being the Southern and the Seaboard Air Line. I've got a book on the SAL and a model railroad magazine describing how to paint an SAL FT in the Citrus Scheme (written, I believe, by Larry Puckett). Were FT's in the Citrus Scheme used normally in freight operations as well as passenger, and was this the case as late as 1950?

Thank you.

-- John B. Hill (clanhill@mindspring.com), August 24, 2001

Answers

Hello John: Seaboard's EMD FTs were all delivered in the "citrus" paint scheme and used on freights during WW2. However, in the late 1940s SAL began to repaint the FTs in the "standard" freight paint scheme of dark green/yellow/orange striping. I posed this same question to Warren Calloway. The answer I received was all FTs were repainted by the early 1950s. So there may have been a FT roaming the rails in "citrus" paint in 1950 but it would have been rare. In fact Calloway's book on Seaboard motive power doesn't have any photos of "citrus" painted FTs after 1948.

-- Richard Stallworth (ThisIsR@aol.com), August 24, 2001.