my ESPEE MODELERS ARCHIVE

California's Railroad to the U.S. 1861 - 1996

Southern Pacific GP35

160 units delivered

8 GP35's made it into Kodachrome paint: 6533, 6566, 6577, 6606, 6619, 6622, 6640, 6644.

SP received 4 orders of GP35's totalling 160 units over a two year period. Initially numbered directly after the GP30's, in the 1965 renumbering these were renumbered sequentially after the Cotton Belt (SSW) GP35's.

The last order was to have been 57 GP35's, numbered to #7784, for whatever reason SP diverted the two that were to have been #7762-7763, to Cotton Belt where they were numbered #780-781. (They later became SSW #6680-6681). the number series then stopped at #7782, with all units moving up two numbers...

Beginning in 1977, 61 GP35's were rebuilt in kind into GP35E/R's.

Later 5 were rebuilt into non-turbo GP35R's.

One modification was; with the phasing out of cabooses, a number of GP35's had their cab seating rearranged to accommodate 5 crew-members. Those modified had '5 CAB' stencilled above the cab-side roadnumber.

Quite a number remained as unrebuilt units until the early 1990's.

References:

• SP Dieselization by John Bonds Garmany
• SP 1987/88 Motive Power Pictorial by Joe.W.Shine, - Page 96. - Photo's.
• SP into the 90's Joe.W.Shine, - Pages 170 - 171. - Photo's.
• 1995 Southern Pacific Motive Power Annual - by Bill Shippen
• Southern Pacific Rails - a motive power finale by Peter Limas
• Southern Pacific Historic Diesels Vol.13 by Joe Strapac

Additional S Scale info courtesy James Baglien.