Railroad Trains for the Soul: EMD at GE
Welcome back to LaRosa's Trains and here is the first blog post for 2021. Blow me whistles! An MBTA F40PH-3C diesel being tested in Erie, Pennsylvania, the original birthplace of General Electric locomotives! What's this Electro-Motive machine doing there? Why is there a crossover between EMD and GE? Technically, the MBTA unit is rebuilt by MotivePower Industries (subsidiary of Wabtec). The Erie factory is no stranger to working on locomotives not made by GE, including some by EMD. Back in the 1930's, not long after the introduction of the streamlined Burlington Zephyr, the Electro-Motive Corporation (acquired by General Motors) initially constructed some early diesels at the GE plant. These include two switchers for the Delaware Lackawanna & Western Railroad as well as some boxcab passenger units like the two EMC demonstrators and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad No. 50. All examples were fitted with the Winton 201A diesel engines. Another brand that built some locomotives in Erie was Fairbanks-Morse. Due to insufficient space at its plant in Beloit, Wisconsin, FM contracted with GE to assemble a series of passenger diesels that became known as Erie-Built's. There was no specific name given to these 1940's-style locomotives.
In the 1980's, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority originally purchased the EMD F40PH and F40PH-2C; the latter featured a Cummins independent head-end power diesel generator as what the C stands for. The MBTA also operates the HSP46 locomotives, which were intended to replace the aging F40 fleet. While the HSP46 is an MPI product, it does actually include a lot of GE electrical and mechanical components such as the GEVO-12 engine. In fact, these custom-designed locomotives were also tested at Erie after being assembled at MPI's plant in Boise, Idaho. This partnership happened a few years before Wabtec merged with GE Transportation. Unfortunately, various sources say that the HSP46 has suffered technical problems during its service, so this would probably be the reason behind the F40PH-3C modernization program. After the completed merger of the two builders, Wabtec announced that the Boise facility would permanently shut its doors in favor of the old Erie plant; this might be bad news for Idahoans but good news for Pennsylvanians. With all the stories being told, the F40PH-3C is the first EMD locomotive to be rebuilt at Erie because all the other non-GE locomotives previously mentioned were newly built there.
Otherwise, here are a couple of videos showing both the F40PH-3C and HSP46 testing in Erie.