As I was getting ready to make some significant changes to an old Athearn SD9, I decided to document a little history about this unit and another one on the layout. These are the first two diesels built back around 1980 for my free-lanced railroad.

The first loco to receive Chesapeake, Wheeling & Erie paint was an Athearn GP7. This engine began life as a stock dummy unit decorated for the SOO, and it's be modified many times over the years. The unit is in the as-delivered paint scheme with the Central Belt logo on the side and small "CW&E" initials in the upper corner of the short hood.

When I first built this unit, I planned to have all-weather windows on all of my diesels. That changed after I had seen numerous photos of coal hauling railroad diesels and none of them had these types of windows. This unit was also numbered in the 4000 series at some point, in Railroad Roman font, but there was no rhyme or reason to the system. Once I decided on a numbering system for the diesel fleet that would more closely reflect each unit's horsepower, I went back and changed the numbering.

The second diesel is an Athearn SD9 which was completed shortly after the GP7 and hasn't been changed much since. It's still numbered in the original numbering system, and at some point it lost one of its all-weather windows.

Those of you who are familiar with Eric Brooman's Utah Belt will quickly see the influence of his work on both the paint scheme and the railroad name. It wasn't until a few years after these units were built that I decided on the more modern scheme with the large CWE letters on the side and the "Central Belt" logo on the front. Note also that I hadn't decided on the practice of mounting the bells on the long hoods at this point.

In addition to adding a sound decoder, I plan to re-number this unit in the 1850 series, update the weathering, and add headlights to either end. With any luck, whoever gets the Big Chimney Roustabout at the next op session will find two SD9's on the point and some sound for a change.
 

Tom Patterson