The Southern Pacific Railroad was one of the most well known rail carriers in the Western United
States, operating from 1865 to 1996. Taking over the Central Pacific railroad in 1885,
which had built the western portion of the first Transcontinental Railroad in the US,
the SP eventually expanded to operate all over the west coast and southwest,
including in California, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana.
Southern Pacific was purchased by the Denver and Rio Grande Western railroad in 1989,
with the company retaining the Southern Pacific identity. Just 7 years later,
in September of 1996, the recently merged company was once again combined, this time with the
Union Pacific Railroad. During its 130 year long history, the Southern Pacific had several classic,
eye catching paint schemes that graced their fleet of equipment. One of the earliest liveries for
mainline diesels was nicknamed “Black Widow” and featured silver noses and a black main carboy with
additional red and orange highlights. Due to the complexity of this scheme, it was quite costly to
apply to locomotives. In the 1950s, Southern Pacific played around with several different
simplified schemes as a cost cutting measure, eventually settling on a red and grey scheme
that came to be known as the “Bloody Nose”. First debuting in 1958, this livery lasted until the end
of the SP and easily became the most recognizable look for the company’s equipment over its entire
history. In this video, we will take a look at several former Southern Pacific locomotives,
still out on the railroad and wearing the Scarlett and grey scheme. In addition to
locomotives lettered for Southern Pacific, we will see a number of units that were previously
owned by Southern Pacific subsidiary railroad St Louis Southwestern, also known as “Cotton Belt”.
Hey everyone, thanks for joining me for this journey to see old Southern Pacific diesel
locomotives in action. As always, a big thanks to all my supporters on Patreon. If you enjoyed
this video and want to see more videos about classic railroad paint schemes in the future,
leave me a comment down below. For updates whenever I post new videos, subscribe to the
channel and select the receive all notifications option. I’ll be back next Friday at 9 AM Pacific
time for an all new railroading adventure right here on the YouTube channel. That’s
it for now. Until next time, I’m Mike Armstrong. I’ll see you down the line! Thanks for watching.