SP SD45R 7513Kansas City KS Kansas City

As a result of the UP/MP merger of 1982, the SP/SSW received trackage rights to run on UP from Kansas City to St. Louis, Missouri. This train is departing the former Rock Island Armourdale Yard in Kansas City, Kansas, and is about to cross the Kansas River into Missouri, where it will proceed across the KC Terminal and on eastward. The lead unit is an SP-rebuilt SD45, followed by an SD45T-2 painted in the ill-fated SPSF merger scheme. The merger of Santa Fe and Southern Pacific, planned for the mid-80's, was denied by the US government as being anti-competitive. The railroads had been so confident that the merger would be approved that they began painting locomotives, cabooses and other equipment in the "Kodachrome" scheme (so named for the resemblance to the box in which that film was sold). Only one loco and caboose were ever painted in the full SPSF design, but dozens of both ATSF and SP units were partially completed like the 9207 above, leading to an interpretation of SPSF as: "Shouldn't Paint So Fast".