Like many of the past locomotives on Pilbara railways, most when their time is up, simply die and their last honours performed in a yard, by cutting them to bare bones and selling them off as scrap.
This story tells of the tale of F7-A road number 5450, coming back from the dead.
EMD F7-A
#5450 built in 1950
Model F7A, 1,435mm-gauge, B-B diesel-electric, 1,500hp
Serial #8970, frame 3006-A9 built Jan-1950 for Western Pacific Railroad as 917-A
A second locomotive, #5451 is also on display at the Don Rhodes Mining & Transport Museum, Port Hedland.
This EMD F7A locomotive is a genuine American F units and was originally used by former Western Pacific Railroad. It is also the oldest streamliner in Australia, even if it did not spend its entire working life here. It was bought second-hand circa late 1967 by the then new Mount Newman Mining Co venture in Western Australia's remote Pilbara region to be used in construction of the railway between Port Hedland and Newman. Following completion of the task, it was put into shunting and secondary duties for a few years before early retirement. Locomotive #5450, has been stored at Dampier (near Karratha).
To start the process of bringing the locomotive back to life with a completely different livery, requires the shell or body to be removed from the chassis which by and large isn't that difficult but usually there will be wires running from the chassis to front and rear lights. These wires need to be disconnected so the upper body can be further disassembled. All windows, horns, lights, handrails, and any other part that can be removed from the body. Once the body is completely stripped of accessories and bling, it needs to be submerged in a tank of 99% IPA (isopropyl alcohol) for any time from a few hours to maybe 3 days. This will remove any decals and soften the existing paint allowing total removal back to its original plastic finish. This is a good time then to make any modifications and undertake repairs if necessary, prior to applying a primer and finally the required top coat. The top coat can be a single colour or multiple colours that will require spraying the lighter colours first then masking the locomotive to protect the newly applied coat and repeating the step until the final coat is applied. In the meantime, the correct decals need to be sourced from a supplier either by way of decals that are available as off the shelf purchase or in most cases, the decals will need to be designed and the graphics file sent away to a decal specialist for printing. I design all my decals using Adobe Illustrator software and when completely satisfied that I have got it right upload to the decal supplier. From then on, it's a process a reverse assembly, that is, to apply the decals and all the accessories required along with the installation of LED lights as required. All my locomotives are fitted with ESU Loksound digital sound decoders programmed with the correct sounds file to match the locomotive that is being worked on. Once the decoder and all necessary wiring is complete, the body can be reunited with the chassis and given a test run.
See video of locomotive 5450 rolling again:
