40 Years of Norfolk Southern Volume 1
The Norfolk Southern Corporation is the next railroad at 40 years old. Just like the CSX and BNSF blog posts, we’ll learn the biggest highlights of locomotive power, some of which is unique to NS.
It all started back in 1982 when the Norfolk & Western and the Southern Railway merged to become today’s Class I railroad. Initially, the newly formed company inherited lots of first- and second-generation diesels with the famous high nose, or short hood, that sharply contrasted with the more popular low nose. Most of them were built by General Motors Electro-Motive Division but there were also a few types of General Electric units.The high short hood was an early method of protecting the train crews from injury during a collision, although the long hood was typically intended to be the front of any locomotive belonging to the N&W and the Southern. The low nose eventually supplanted the high nose as the standard configuration by the early 1960’s, but the two NS predecessors were still obsessed with high-hood diesels. However, the N&W took delivery of its first low-nose diesels in 1974; these were the Electro-Motive SD40-2’s (numbered 1636 to 1652), which augmented the early high-nose versions. Despite those cab changes, the long hood continued to be designated as the front of the locomotive. The Southern became the last major railroad preferring high hoods and its final fleet was the EMD GP50, delivered in 1981.
Not surprisingly, Norfolk Southern used some pre-owned locomotives as an experiment for what would become its first official paint scheme. It was coated on a quartet of former Norfolk & Western GP38AC diesels (numbers 4129-4132) in 1983. It wasn’t until the next year when NS began purchasing new locomotives. The first was an overdue fleet of 12 General Electric C36-7 units (Nos. 8531-8542); this was a supplement to 31 of the same class (Nos. 8500-8530) that N&W originally bought shortly before the merger. By the early 1980’s, microprocessors became applicable for locomotive operations so the next diesels built for NS were the GE C39-8’s, which were also the first new units featuring NS logos. In contrast, the last dozen of C36-7’s were not delivered in that paint scheme. In July 1984, two months after receiving the GE Dash-7’s, NS turned to Electro-Motive for 20 SD50’s, the first new EMD units for that railroad. In response to visibility concerns from train engineers, NS ordered the EMD GP59 and the GE DASH 8-32B as the final locomotives with their long hoods configured as the front. The result was the 1990 delivery of the SD60 and DASH 8-40C being the first units to use the short hood as the default forward direction.
One of the characteristics unique to Norfolk Southern was power conservation. It used to purchase lower horsepower options (often with 12-cylinder diesel engines) of a primary locomotive model from both Electro-Motive and General Electric. This was inspired by EMD’s experimental GP39X, only six of which were built as prototype units and later bought by the Southern Railway. These were the forerunner to the GP49 model, the 12-cylinder version of the GP50. Following the NS merger, the 39X diesels were modified to be reclassified as 49’s. When EMD introduced the GP60, NS wanted a smaller V12 variant named the GP59. GE debuted two of its unique 3,000-horsepower types: the B30-7A and C30-7A, both of which feature 12-cylinder engines for greater fuel efficiency; the Southern bought the B model. While GE marketed its own 4,000-hp diesels as the primary types of the DASH 8 series, NS chose the 3,200-hp, four-axle B32-8 with the V12 engine for the same purpose. However, the railroad did buy several ordinary classes including the EMD GP60 and SD60 as well as the GE DASH 8-40C, all powered by 16-cylinder engines.
Perhaps the most iconic of all diesel locomotives in the entire history of Norfolk Southern is the General Electric DASH 9. Beginning in the late 1980’s, many American Class I railroads began purchasing diesels with the revolutionary, wide-nosed safety cab. NS, however, continued its obsession with low-nose locomotives for a while and was the last railroad preferring that option. It placed an order for its first 125 GE DASH 9-40C’s, all of which featured the narrow nose, numbered from 8764 to 8888, and delivered in 1995. NS also received its first 56 Electro-Motive SD70’s (Nos. 2501-2556) with the so-called “standard cabs”. By the time unit number 8889 was built, Norfolk Southern finally gained interest in wide-cab locomotives and ordered the first example of the GE DASH 9-40CW.
Introduced in 1996, the C40-9W was a 4,000-hp variant of the popular DASH 9-44CW. Again, NS wanted more low-horsepower locomotives, although both of GE’s models feature the same 16-cylinder 7FDL diesel engine. Despite the success of the comfort cab design, NS chose not to have desktop control consoles installed in its C40-9W’s. Instead, these units were equipped with conventional left-hand control stands. In fact, some of the Norfolk & Western diesels had two control stands in one cab for easy bidirectional operation. Desktops, on the other hand, are mostly intended for forward-only movements, but NS has many locomotives that frequently move both forwards and backwards. This is why conventional controls would be more suitable for that situation. Between 1996 and 2004, NS purchased more than 1,000 GE wide-cab diesels in addition to the narrow-nose versions, making itself the second largest owner of any DASH 9.
Please stay tuned for Volume 2 of Norfolk Southern’s 40th anniversary.
Photo credit: Emmett Tullos
