Southern Pacific Santa Fe Railroad
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
The Southern Pacific Santa Fe (SPSF) railroad was intended to be formed as part of the merger between the parent companies of the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe railroads in 1984. The holding company, the Santa Fe Southern Pacific Corporation, controlled all the rail and non-rail assets of the former Santa Fe Industries and Southern Pacific Company, and it was intended that the two railroads would be merged. They were confident enough that this would be approved that they began repainting locomotives into a new unified paint scheme.
The merger was denied by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) who ruled that such a merger included too many duplicate routes. After the ICC's denial, railfans joked that SPSF really stood for "Shouldn't Paint So Fast".
The two railroads eventually did merge, only not with each other. The holding company, ordered to operate the Southern Pacific at arm's length until it sold it, disposed of it in 1988 to Rio Grande Industries, which consolidated the SP with its Denver and Rio Grande Western railroad under the Southern Pacific name. The holding company retained all the non-rail interests of both predecessors and shortened its name to Santa Fe Pacific Corporation. In 1995, the Santa Fe railroad merged with the Burlington Northern Railroad to form the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (BNSF), and the SP merged with the Union Pacific Railroad the following year.
"Kodachrome" Paint Scheme
The locomotive livery featured the Santa Fe's "warbonnet" in yellow with a red stripe on the locomotive's nose; the remainder of the locomotive body was painted red with a black roof and black extending down to the lower part of the locomotive's radiator grills. In large block letters within the red portion of the sides was either "SP" (for Southern Pacific-owned locomotives) or "SF" (for Santa Fe-owned locomotives). The lettering was positioned on the locomotive sides so that the other half of the lettering could be added after the merger became official. One locomotive was painted with the full SPSF lettering to show what the unified paint scheme would look like after the merger was complete.
This paint scheme, combining yellow, red and black, has come to be called the "Kodachrome" paint scheme due to the colors' resemblance to those on the boxes that Kodak used to package its Kodachrome slide film (which was heavily used by railfans of the time).
Approximately twenty percent (20%) of the respective motive power fleets had been painted in this fashion at the time of merger denial. Even though the two railroads made an effort to repaint locomotives back into their standard paint schemes after the merger was denied, the occasional Kodachrome-painted locomotive still operates in lease service today.
 ATSF #5800, an EMD model SD45-2u decked out in the SPSF Kodachrome colors, leads a trio of locomotives through California's Mojave Desert including a similarly-painted F45 and trailing SD45-2u. |
 Santa Fe Type Ce-2 caboose #999528 is one of the few way cars to be painted out in the SPSF Kodachrome scheme. |
 Southern Pacific's #6354, an EMD model GP35, is seen fresh out of the paint shops in Roseville, California, in this 1986 photo. |
