A few days ago, Wayne Duffett and I had a discussion about a photo that our friend Don Marson made recently of an A-B-B-B-A set of BNSF GP60M-GP60Bs.

I hadn’t realized that such curious locomotives were still owned and operated by BNSF. I thought back to the days when Santa Fe’s GP60M were new and wearing fresh Warbonnet red-yellow-and-silver paint.

Among the ‘seconds’ I’ve been sorting through recently include many of the Kodachrome slides that I made on the Santa Fe between 1989 and 1995.

In October 1990, photographer Brian Jennison and I made a trip to Christie siding on Santa Fe’s extension to Richmond, California that winds its way through Franklin Canyon.

I made this photo of an eastward Santa Fe freight at the west switch of Christie. I’d been very impressed by the rolling terraced hills covered in California golden grass, and wanted to emphasize this unusual scenery.

At the time, I was working with a Nikon F3T (titanium) fitted with an f4.0 200mm lens. My placement of the locomotives in the lower left was designed to accentuate the hills while creating visual tension that forces the eye back to the Warbonnet painted GP60Ms.

This was by no means the last time I photographed Santa Fe’s ‘Hot Rods’ in action. Over the years, this photo has grown on me.

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