ATSF FP45 5944

History
	Santa Fe FP45 5944 was built in December 1967 as Santa Fe 104. It was renumbered 5944 in March 1970 as part of the 1969/70 general renumbering. It was originally painted in the passenger red and silver warbonnet scheme, and assigned to Santa Fe's premier passenger trains. On the eve of Amtrak, April 30, 1971, Clark Bauman photographed the 5944 on the point of the last eastbound San Francisco Chief as it made its station stop at Barstow, CA.
	Following the formation of Amtrak, the FP45's were reassigned to freight duties, and one by one they went into the shops to have their steam generators removed and a coat of freight blue and yellow paint applied. The 5944 held out the longest. When J.C. Blackwell photographed the unit at the Redondo Junction roundhouse in Los Angeles, CA in April 1973, it was the only red and silver FP45 left (upper left).
	Amtrak borrowed FP45's 5942 and 5944, along with a number of F45's, in 1973 to replace increasingly cantankerous F-units on Amtrak's version of the Super Chief. The lease only lasted for a matter of months, until Amtrak's first order of SDP40F's arrived in late 1973. Things still didn't always go smoothly, as the upper view by John Sjolander depicts an afternoon arrival of Train 3 at Barstow, CA in April 1973. The very late train was annulled and turned, with the remaining westbound passengers bussed to their destinations. Jim Munding recorded the unit, still in Amtrak service, at the Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal the following month (lower view, from the collection of Keith Ardinger).
	This broadside view of 5944, stopped at Dodge City, KS with Amtrak Tr.3 on June 10, 1973, shows off all 72 feet of the carbody to good advantage. Access to the engineroom from this side was limited to the pair of doors occupied by the letters N and T in Santa Fe and the smaller door with a porthole below the radiators, as well as a door inside the cab behind the engineer's seat.
	Quite possibly the last photo of 5944 in red and silver, this view by John Sjolander shows the unit inside the San Bernardino Shops in August 1973, where it would finally receive a coat of blue and yellow freight paint.
	The 5942 and 5944 were the only two FP45's that never wore the intermediate blue and yellow pinstripe scheme, going directly from the red and silver passenger warbonnet into the blue and yellow freight warbonnet. E.D. Motis found the 5944 back-to-back with an F45 at Kansas City, KS on April 16, 1977.
	Unfortunately, 5944's other claim to fame was a tragic one: it was the first 6-axle cowl unit to leave the roster. Around 3:30am on the morning of September 13, 1981, the unit was involved in a head-on collision at Toland, TX, east of Sweetwater. The FRA accident report doesn't list 5944 as a lead unit, and with only one injury resulting from the crash, it seems likely that the unit was trailing and its cab was unoccupied. The photo at left by Mike Mucklin shows the damaged unit a month after the accident at San Bernardino, CA. The 5944 was determined to be damaged beyond economical repair and was ultimately scrapped, though Santa Fe reportedly kept the remains of the cowl body at the San Bernardino shops for several years in case they needed it for a wreck repair of another cowl unit.

References
1. EuDaly, Kevin, Santa Fe 1992 Annual, Denver: Hyrail Productions, 1992.
2. McMillan, Joe, Santa Fe's Diesel Fleet, Chatham Publishing Co, 1975.
3. McMillan, Joe, Santa Fe Motive Power, McMillan Publications, 1985.
4. Shine, Joseph, Santa Fe 1987 Motive Power Review, Four Ways West Publishing, 1988.
Special thanks to Keith Ardinger, Clark Bauman, J.C. Blackwell, John Sjolander, E.D. Motis, Mike Mucklin, Gerry Putz, and John Sjolander for the use of their photos