RE: (erielack) EL Geep 7's

["Tupaczewski, Paul R (Paul)" <paultup_@_lucent.com>]

Jim Flynn asked:

>         There are some shots of EL GP-7's (freight variety) 
> on George's site. Without looking back at them, I believe 
> they are all in the 1226 - 1236 range (but not all of them).  
>         Anyone out there know why some of the Geeps had their 
> horns mounted on the sides of the hoods and others on top of 
> both hoods ?  It seems that they were delivered this way.  
> I've seen shots of both ERIE and DL&W units in their original 
> paint and the horns on both roads varied in their mountings 
> even when they were fairly new.  Also, it looks like this 
> applied only to the freighters, not the passenger units.

The Erie freight GP7s (1200-1233) has the "standard" placement of horns on
the sides of the long and short hoods. The 1234-1246 had the horns atop the
hoods (always looked goofy to me)

The GP9s continued the horn-atop-the-hoods. Note that all these horns were
single-note "blat" horns, one facing each direction.

The Lackawanna GP7s (1270-1284 on the EL) has the "standard" hood-side
placement as well. 

A couple of theories here:

1) Erie wanted better sound, so they went to the roof (a guess!)
2) It was discovered snow didn't fill up the horns on the roof?
3) It was an EMD change - all Erie units with the horns on the roofs were
post August 1952; all earlier Erie and DL&W units were built prior to that
date.

Option 3 is the most promising, IMHO....

The passenger units also follow this theory:

Erie 1400-1403 had hood-side horns; Erie 1404 (built 10-52) had hood-top
horns. Ex-DL&W 1405-1409 (built 1953) had hood-top horns (yes, there is a
horn hidden between those torpedo tubes!)

	- Paul

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