Subscribe to download
Evergreen Pacific & Eastern F7A

In 1953, the EP&E bought a set of F7s in hopes of resurrecting their named passenger trains, which had been dropped in 1938. After a strong first year, ridership dropped as car ownership rose--a crunch the rest of American railroading felt, but one the EP&E felt deeply. The two A-B pairs were assigned to lower-level passenger duty, and the occasional freight train from 1955 on.

After the last EP&E steam engines were retired in 1962, the four F7s carried almost all of the railroad’s traffic until the BN purchase in 1975. Following the subsequent closure of the EP&E, they were reassigned to service along the Washington coast. While the A units were scrapped in the late 1980s, one of the B units survives on the Lake Whatcom Railway in Wickersham. Their original livery was believed to have inspired the Amtrak Cascades paint scheme, given the similar color palette. No design documentation mentions the railroad, though, so the similarities are likely a coincidence.

---

And that's about it for my fantasy jam series...for now. Watch for a couple "add-on" cars tomorrow, and then I've got a backlog of "real" liveries I've been saving for after the jam. This won't be the end of the EP&E, though. Not by a long shot. It's fairly early in development, but the EP&E layout I've taken all the photos in will be out...sometime.

Thanks to everyone who's been subscribing and commenting! I had a lot of fun coming up with these liveries, and really making my dream railroad come to life. Why not check my workshop to see what else is coming down the line?