This card shows F3 #291, which General Motors built as a demonstrator for this type of locomotive in July, 1945, which was 150 horsepower more powerful than its predecessor, the FT. Photographs of the four demonstrator units show that they were painted in two shades of bright blue, but this card makes them look two-tone gray. GM sent this demonstrator on a 125,000-mile trip around the country, leading 30 railroads to order nearly 750 locomotives of this type before production even began.

Click image to download a 715-KB PDF of this card.

After the demonstration trip, GM sold one A and one B unit to the Toledo, Peoria & Western Railroad. The other B unit was sold to the Monon, while the second A unit was destroyed in a head-on collision with a Chicago Great Western steam locomotive during a demonstration run in February 1946. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured. Although most F3 locomotives were used for freight, several railroads including the Santa Fe, Great Northern, and Northern Pacific used them for passenger trains.

Click image for a larger view.

From the late 1930s through at least the 1950s, General Motors probably made a card like this for every class of locomotives and railroad that bought that class. The fronts of the cards show the colorful paint schemes developed by GM styling while the backs provided the technical specifications of each locomotive.

The cards are based on paintings by GM stylists who actually designed the paint schemes for each railroad. In the late 1930s, Leland Knickerbocker famously designed the Santa Fe warbonnet scheme used on the Super Chief and other passenger locomotives. Knickerbocker died in 1939, and in 1945 when this card was printed most of the styling and paintings were done by Harry Bockewicz and Ben Dedek. The signature on this card’s painting has been cropped off, but it looks like the work of Ben Dedek to me.