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MISSOURI
PACIFIC HERITAGE UNIT Undeniably it is one of the best tastefully rendered paintjobs the UP paintshops have designed. We all know that if we lived in a in a merger-less universe MP would still be pushing the envelope, loading up it's 21st century rail arsenal with a bevvie of SD70ACe's and in an updated paint job. Ahhh... the Mighty
MoPac still lives on through it's colorful legacy. Inception
a New Eagle is ...Hatched Unveiling
If You Build it, They will Come Operation
Rolling, Rolling,
Rolling First
New Missouri Pacific Engine in 20 Years Now remember, this is what is legally recognized on paper. When UP bought the MP, the Missouri Pacific was in fact the larger system of the two. Maybe you could imagine this like a goldfish swallowing a rainbow trout, it may look like a goldfish (bloated!) but there's still a lot of trout there. Though MP eventually assumed the buyer's name, still this was in reality a true merger. The UPRR logically was changed by this just as much as the MP. The Mopac's men and machines were carried over, and business continued on as usual. Many of the minds from the MoPac system now are running the current UPRR. In this perspective, aside from paint and the UP name, the MP still is alive under the yellow surface. That's what makes
the UP 1992 "mean" something. It's not a locomotive somebody painted up
as a make-believe display. This was dreamed up by some of the very people
who were part of that system. So in a sense, the UP 1982 Missouri Pacific
Heritage Unit is the first new "MoPac" locomotive in two decades (literally,
since the last new engines delivered to MoPac were the final C 36-7 order
in November 1985). After all the "what if" locomotive schemes people have
dreamed of for the Mop, we now have the real deal. A
Personal Perspective
She's very true to the image that the Mopac originally portrayed (if you can overlook those garish silver trucks - I don't think the UP boys wanted us to forget too much she's still on the UP roster!). I see the design as a modernized up-to-date Jenks scheme... maybe you could call it a "Jenks 3" (the original schemes of turbo eagles and the large hood numbers being "Jenks 1" and "Jenks 2" respectively) that harkens back to the "Route of the Eagles" with its spread eagle nose emblem. From the rear she looks precisely like her predesesors and from the front the lighter "Power Blue" compliments the Jenks blue very tastefully. Speaking of that nose emblem. The Missouri Pacific used a number of slight variants of it's spread eagle emblem on motive power, observation cars and the Eaglette motorailer - in stainless steel, in relief, and painted-on. Still I've never came across one that looked exactly like the UP 1982's. Maybe Omaha lost the keys to the UP's hidden storage vault where all the original plans are probably located (where's Indiana Jones when you really need him!) and redrew it. The MoPac's original Loewy-designed emblem was art deco - angular, drawing upon Aztec and American Indian thunderbird inspiration. The 1982's wing feathers look slightly rounder maybe (to me anyway). Maybe this is an optical illusion since the original stainless steel eagles wrapped around the sloping curved surface of an E-unit instead of a flat, modern safety cab. Also, a "buzzsaw tail" that fits below the buzzsaw emblem has been added. We'll probably never know why the slight change to an established symbol. The UP 1982's new turbo eagle is actually copied faithfully from the stylized eagle buzzsaw emblem rather than the original large turbo eagle's adorning the long hoods in the 60's-70's. Its actaully something I had wondered would have looked like if the MoPac had been inclined to keep painting turbo eagles into the 80's, so it was a bonus for me to see this thought become a reality. Out of all the heritage
locomotives I'd say UP 1982, not only is the purest to her namesake's
motive power, but also the most appealing in appearence. Check out the
numbers at
RRPicturesArchives.net - she's the most photographed unit out of 83,580
locomotives and counting.
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© 2008 T. Greuter / Screaming Eagles, unless otherwise noted. All Rights Reserved. | |