04-04-2009, 10:40 AM
Most railroads in the U.S. have not bothered to preserve their past. Some donated obsolete steam engines to municipalities to put in parks. The Santa Fe donated a steam engine to almost every town served on the line when they scrapped out steam, but since much of the Santa Fe territory is in "tornado alley," many of those locomotives had their boilers filled with concrete to keep them from blowing away. As a result, a lot of the ex Santa Fe steam engines on display in parks can't be restored. Diesels were a different story. At the time the first generation diesels started to be phased out, nobody cared what happened to them. I think also the E-5's and 6's were victims of WW2. I think they were at best interim models prior to production of the E8s and E9s. It made sense for EMD to save money by using a common cab and short hood on both the E and the F units, so the earlier E's had short production runs, I think. I may be mistaken, but I don't think there were a lot of E6s made.