Frisco Meteor 4501 by Richardphotos
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Description
The Meteor was a named passenger train operated by the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway (a.k.a. SLSF or "the Frisco"). It ran overnight between Oklahoma City and St. Louis via Tulsa. The name was shared with a branch line Meteor running between Monett, Missouri, and Paris, Texas. Later this line was truncated to terminate at Fort Smith, Arkansas. These Frisco trains should not be confused with Amtrak's Silver Meteor.
Frisco locomotives No. 4500, 4501 and 4502, three of twenty-five Northern class Baldwin 4-8-4s built for Frisco during World War II were designated for use on the Meteor. These locomotives were delivered in a distinctive zephyr blue, white and gray paint scheme with "Meteor" spelled out across the tender in bold red lettering. These three passenger engines also saw service pulling the Texas Special. In 1948, Frisco 4501 still in its Meteor livery pulled President Harry S. Truman's whistle stop tour train through his home state of Missouri.
When the Meteor was converted to use diesel locomotives, No. 4500 was re-painted into Frisco's standard black with gold striping and lettering and assigned to passenger trains such as the General Wood and the Will Rogers.
Engine No. 4501 resides at the Museum of the American Railroad, in Texas.[1] The restored Engine No. 4500 resides in Route 66 Station Park, also known as Route 66 Village, in Tulsa, OK.[2]
The new streamlined, diesel equipped Meteor began westbound operations on May 14, 1948, with its first eastbound train departing Oklahoma City on May 15. Frisco purchased the EMD E7 locomotives and Pullman cars for the Meteor at the same time as they purchased ones for the Texas Special, so the two trains shared a distinctive look; bright red with corrugated aluminum side panels. Frisco bought sets of named cars for each train. Wikipedia
Comments (44)
Soooooooooooooooo beautiful!
Great looking engine Richard!
Great capture and motif, Ricard. A very beautiful locomotive design imho. A nice historic piece.
Cool picture.
Cool and so long. Thanks for the infos!
Cool train... good to be able to read a little history on them!..
Powerful Locomotion!!!!Very beautiful!!!!!!
Great capture of this truly amazing train, Richard. Thanks also for the background info
Very nice photo Richard and thanks for the info. I never seen one of these because they never got up to Michigan on tour. Stan
Cool!! Great info too.
Steam engine and the coal car.
Very cool
She looks wonderful. The Northerns were perhaps the best of all passenger engines with a combination of good speed and power.
It looks great!
What a power seems to get free of this machine! Astounding! Bravo Richard!
awesome
I love it!
Beautiful machine Great shot!!!!!!!!
what an awesome looking train!
Cool engine, outstanding capture!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is a great shot Richard and nice to have 'a tender behind'!!
Fantastic capture and marvelous image !
Fantastic loco.
Great looking train and nice capture!
great information Ricahrd and cool shot of this train.
Superb engine !
A fine shot Richard.
Lovely this train and i was thin king of a car in first lol?? ((5++))
This is neat. Have to put this in the "to do when you get a chance" folder.
Outstanding capture and information!!