It's the most successful North American passenger locomotive of the last 50 years, and key figure in the equipment generation that turned around the decline in commuter and intercity ridership by purging the old postwar crash -era rolling ruins with comfortable and reliable accommodations that won riders back. A whole generation of people who rediscovered train transit as a
usable service and not an anachronistic oddity associate their conversion with the iconic shape of an F40PH hood pulling a string of Amfleets or Comet-class commuter coaches or Chicagoland gallery cars. I mean, if you had to pick one visual image to show a visitor from an isolated island culture that says without words "This is American passenger rail", it probably looks something like this:
F40's are still the #1 passenger make on the continent because they Just Work™, and probably will hold that distinction for another 10 years easy at the rate they're still being rebuilt to -3/-3C spec and modern emissions tiers. But...the active ranks are nearly all derived from the 1980's -2/2C generation that never ran in constant Notch 8, or are former Screamers that were so heavily modified for HEP two decades ago that their original lineage was broken in the mods to -2 or -3 spec. Original unmodified Screamers are pretty rare now with all the Amtrak dispersals scrapped, rebuilt, or otherwise passed through too many owners / paint jobs / minor mechanical tweaks by 20 years of aftermarket laundering. The T's 17 Screamers are the largest 'pristine' batch of original units left from an original owner, and thus have historical importance as some of the last relatively unspoiled representatives of North American passenger rail's "comeback" generation of rolling stock. There's not going to be museums in bidding wars for all 17 units. Most of them probably will get digested by the aftermarket as scrap parts donors, or revived for service by the rent-a-wreck brokers in not-quite-original form by parts donations from other F40's. But 1...maybe 2...mechanically complete unmodified examples for static display is an important enough 'get' that a preservation society would have very serious interest. Starting with the officially-named units in the fleet, especially "Mr. Commuter Rail" #1000 if Henry Hersey's namesake can be the one set aside.