An Illinois Terminal SW1200 swings out onto street-running in Monticello with a freight headed for Decatur in August of '59. Particularly bizarre was that IT ordered their SW1200s with solid (friction) bearings in the Flexicoil trucks. A serious cheapskate move.
A first-gen Thunderbird dodges SW1200 #777 as it heads down the road at Monticello, IL
When N&W took over the IT, they rather tastefully patched the SD39s with N&W lettering and assigned them to working the eastern end of the old Wheeling & Lake Erie, particularly coal drags out on the Adena and AC&NA branches. I imagine that handling a coal train with these SD39s, which weren't equipped with dynamic brakes, took some skill.
Illinois Railway Museum has preserved IT GP7 #1605, one of five or so surviving IT diesels, one of only two in a musuem, and the only one actually restored.
IT SW1200 #781 has been saved by Monticello Railway Museum but is in need of overhaul and restoration. It also lost it's Flexicoil trucks for standard AAR Type A trucks off of an NW2 at some point.
Seeing all the shiny paint makes me wonder how many man hours does it take to clean a modern locomotive? Far less than any steamer, but the old carbody shapes had to clean quicker than today's open access engine rooms. Clearly why nobody liked the light turquiose is it looked dirty day 2! Sure looks good now. Also why my local N/S uses black and never cleans anything. I see their ROW crews frequently in "white" trucks.
In reply to TurnerX19 :
Mostly they just use wash racks, which are basically a drive-through pressure washer that blasts them off. But I'm not sure how many Class Is have wash racks or use them these days. If something is undergoing heavy overhaul, then it usually gets a wash and repaint while it's apart, but seems like mostly, stuff rarely gets cleaned anymore, since a clean engine doesn't pull anymore than a dirty one.
An SP PA getting a wash in Oakland.
When it came to steam locomotives, those were typically pressure-washed with a combination of steam from the boiler and hot water mixed with kerosene. The kerosene would cut through the grease that accumulated on the running gear from the lubricator, and that was the most important thing to keep clean. That grease and oil would collect sand and dust and then scour the cylinder packing and rod journals. Then, you would have had a follow up with rags or cotton waste and kerosene or other cleaners to wipe down the boiler jacket, and would use water and brushes on the sides of the tender and cab. Historical note; Hostling, washing, and wiping were all jobs handled by women during WWII. While heavy maintenance personnel and operating crews were all considered essential to the war effort and largely immune to the draft, the minor jobs like this were not, and so women filled the gaps left, along with taking over dispatcher and agent jobs.
N&W had some wash racks for their steam locomotives that looked like what were later used on diesels, but that's N&W for you. They also had specialized facilities for rapidly lubricating to locomotives to minimize turnaround time as well.
D&RGW SW1000 #143 pulls a string of Rio Grande Zephry cars through a car wash, which added those spinning roller brushes on the sides to more effectively clean the sides and windows.
Amtrak Superliner coaches get a wash from a forklift-mounted wash unit.
Pretty amazing to see that Milwaukee Road was still keeping up appearances on their equipment as late as 1979, when the railroad was bankrupt and on the verge of tearing up the Pacific Coast Extension.
Illinois Central E8A #4027 stops with the northbound City Of Miami at Champaign, Illinois for the crew to wash the bugs off the windshield and headlight. Photo taken June of 1960 by J. Parker Lamb.
According to Marc Glucksman, the old NYS&W E9Ams were finally moved off the Mass Coastal/Cape Cod Central Railroad. These were CB&Q E9s that were rebuilt by Morrison-Knudsen with 645 power packs and HEP generators for commuter use under Burlington Northern. Walter Rich, president of the Susquehanna, grabbed a pair and painted them in this maroon and yellow scheme, renumbering them to #2400 and #2402, and used them for excursions. After Walter Rich's death in '07, they sat around for a few years, before the NYS&W sold them to Iowa Pacific Holdings in 2013. IPH partnered with Cape Rail, Inc. (owner of Mass Coastal and Cape Cod Central) and was running excursions using the E9s and a bunch of their coaches, and then IPH imploded in 2019 and they've been sitting there ever since. From what I've heard, the two were pretty tired even when the Susquehanna had them, and sitting for 6 years hasn't made them look any better. They were spotted with LTEX reporting marks, meaning they're headed to Larry's Truck & Electric, who already has a bunch of the old BN E9Ams, still in BN paint. No clue what the future holds for them there.
In reply to NickD :
Man that is sad, I think I see salt seam rot where the compound curve meets the single curve just above the empty number box and all around the bottom edge of the bodywork at the front. Lots harder to fix than automobile bodywork.
In reply to TurnerX19 :
Yeah, rust was the big problem with F- and E-units. Unlike the later GPs and SDs, and even the F45s and F40s, which were body-on-frame, the early carbody units were unibody design, so rust was also a structural issue. And they had were prone to it especially in the nose, because the sandboxes were up there, so you would get a bunch of loose sand trapped down in the lower seams and then it would suck up any moisture and rot it out. I remember hearing that one of the big railroads, I think it was PRR (they certainly had the facilities), had a major rebuilding program for the Es and Fs where every 5 or 10 years, they would strip them down and completely rebuild the front bodywork to eliminate rust. Those noses are complex too, construction was a combination of stamping, welding sheetmetal onto a formed frame, and hand smoothing for the curves around the headlight with lead filler. A lot of accident repair for smaller roads was done by sending the unit to EMD, or EMD would sell them cab fronts to graft on. Rock Island and Soo tried to repair a few themselves, and they couldn't get the headlight nacelle right, so they just deleted it, and the result was freakish-looking.
Rust was a big reason why Adirondack ditched their ex-Alaska RR F7A, #1508, and ex-GM&O/Metro North "FP10" #1502, last year, also sent to LTEX along with a parts donor FL9. I heard from Adirondack volunteers that while they ran okay (the #1508 was said to run particularly well when parked), the rust issue had gotten so bad that it would require either extensive repairs that they weren't equipped to handle, or they were going to have to reshell all the mechanical bits. And then, while the #1508 was parked at Utica awaiting being sent to LTEX, the Utica meth-heads stripped all the copper wiring out of it. I learned that when I saw someone on Ahead of the Torch looking for a complete F-unit to restore, who wanted it to be relatively mechanical complete and sound but was okay with rust repair. I suggested calling LTEX about the #1508, since that fit the bill, and was told that they had called LTEX and been told that the F-units weren't being scrapped but weren't for sale (LTEX is a weird business), and then Matt Giardino added in that the #1508 was missing most of the low-voltage wiring now.
In reply to Duke :
At first I thought that was GN Y-1a #5011, but that's one of two GN W-1 electrics. Built by GE in 1947, they were a 5000hp B-D-D-B electric that ran on 11 kilovolt, 25 Hertz AC for the roughly 72-mile GN electrified line from Skykomish to Wenatchee. This was specifically for getting through the Cascade Mountains, especially the 7.8 mile Cascade Tunnel. It was essentially an electric helper district, not an electrified mainline like New Haven or PRR or Milwaukee Road had. The W-1s were short-lived, retired in '56, because diesel power didn't have the asphyxiation hazard of steam locomotives in Cascade Tunnel, and the #5019 was scrapped in '59. The #5018 was purchased by UP, who stripped the body off and installed a coal-burning turbine on board as part of three-unit experimental coal turbine #80. The lead power car was an Alco PA-1, then there was the #5018, and then UP 4-6-6-4 #3990's tender fueling it.
Constructed in 1962, the #80 had severe issues with blade erosion and soot build-up. Grinding coal into fine particles was also troublesome but necessary because any oversized coal particles could damage the turbine blades. Ultimately, the experiment was declared a failure and was scrapped after spending only 20 months in service. While conventional gas turbine locomotives each racked up well over a million miles in revenue service, the coal turbine prototype ran less than 10,000 miles before being struck from the UP roster on March 15, 1968
Great Northern Y-1a #5011, which I mentioned above, was an odd beast.
GN electrified the original Cascade Tunnel (approximately 1.5 miles north and 500 feet higher than today's tunnel) in 1909, just twelve years after opening the tunnel. The first Cascade Tunnel electrification ran between Cascade Tunnel station on the east, and Wellington on the west, just 4 miles of track. It was a unique, one-of-a-kind three 6600V three phase AC system, which would run at either 15 or 7 mph depending on which set of induction windings you tapped. The little electrics each had two trolley poles, and the rails acted as the third phase. GN used four Alco-GE boxcab electrics, rated at 1500hp and weighing 115 tones, with three locomotives coupled together and hauling trains at a constant speed of 15.6 mph. When larger trains required four locomotives the motors were concatenated and speed was halved to 7.8 mph to avoid overloading the power supply.
The original Cascade Tunnel route was plagued with snow slides and a stiff grade, so in 1927, GN began constructing the modern day tunnel, farther south and at a lower elevation. The ruling grade was still 2.2 percent, but 21 miles of 2 percent or worse grade was eliminated, the line length was reduced by 8.7 miles, and maximum elevation was lowered by 502 feet from 3,382 feet to 2,881 feet. They also decided to upgrade to a more standard electrification and purchase new, bigger power. Alco-GE constructed 8 boxcab Y-1 electrics over a period of 4 years, two in '27, two in '28, and 4 in '30. The Y-1s operated on single-phase 11 kilovolt, 25 Hertz AC, and generated 3000 continuous horsepower, with a 1 hour peak of 3300hp, on a 1-C+C-1 wheel arrangement.
One of those Y-1s, the #5011, was involved in an accident at Tonga, Washington in July of 1945. During the rebuild, for whatever reasons, GN had brand-new (and expensive) FT cabs from EMD installed on both ends of the unit and reclassed it to a Y-1a. I have to wonder if this was maybe a pilot for a planned rebuild program that would have been performed on all Y-1as, only for it to be stillborn due to rise of the diesels making the electric power redundant. The boxy enclosure over the headlight contained a bus bar that allowed multiple Y-1s to share power from only a single pantograph, reducing catenary wear.
The eight Y-1s all lasted until de-electrification in 1956, when they were put out to pasture with the Alco-GE W-1s and Westinghouse Z-1s. The PRR sent a team of employees out to the GN in in August of 1956 and they inspected the 15 available GN electrics, but decided to only take the 8 Y-1s. They were cheap, available electrical power, and they used the same voltage and frequency, so major mechanical changes would be minimal to make them operable on the PRR. They were shipped east and the Y-1a, #5011, was chosen to be broken up for parts for the oher seven Y-1s, as well as to use the EMD FT cabs on a couple of wrecked PRR F-units (going back to earlier discussions on cost and complexity of F-unit noses). There were 48 mechanical, structural and electrical changes made on the remaining 7 before they went into service on the Pennsy. Among the changes was the removal of the rooftop bus connectors and regenerative braking, and addition of PRR-type MU connections, US&S cab signals and electric water coolers. The other noticeable difference the Pennsy made was to remove the side doors and grab irons to meet clearance restrictions.
Reclassed to FF2s, they were not particularly successful on the PRR. The big issue was that GN used them in basically a mountain helper district, and so they never operated very fast. Between that, and their age, they were equipped with solid bearings, and when PRR tried to operate them at 50mph mainline freight speeds, they tended to overheat axle bearings. Sustained speeds had to be kept below 30mph, which made them a rolling traffic jam on the PRR mainline. Also, the FF2's had to be operated very carefully when applying power from standing stop to prevent the wheels from breaking loose from the flanged tire rims and dropping the whole chassis onto the roadbed. Used mainly in helper service at Columbia and Thorndale, they began to be retired as early as 1960, and the arrival of the E44s polished off the FF2s, along with the experimental one-off Westinghouse E2/E3s, the remaining P5 fleet and all the other one-off or older classes outside of the single DD-1 pair, two O-1s and two L-6s in Manhattan tunnel maintenance and transfer service.
NickD said:Amtrak Superliner coaches get a wash from a forklift-mounted wash unit.
In 2015, gee that's a long time ago now, we crossed the US from San Fran to Boston and I recall a small crew cleaning all the windows while we were stopped at Denver. They had long wands from the ground rather than a lift truck though 
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