The BL2 was an early example of a road switcher locomotive and set the stage for EMD’s widely successful GP series of locomotives. Only 59 of the semi-streamlined locomotives were produced between September 1947 and May 1949. The Bangor & Aroostook Railroad owned eight BL2s, and when they were retired, one was preserved at the Cole Transportation Museum in Bangor, Maine. Two others were sold to diesel enthusiast Glenn Monhart and moved to Wisconsin. They were stored following his death in 1998 and eventually acquired by Clint Jones, who resold them to Iowa Pacific in 2008.
Iowa Pacific Holdings President Ed Ellis knows the units well, since one operated for a time on his Wisconsin & Calumet Railroad out of Janesville, Wis., in the 1980s and 1990s.
Former Bangor & Aroostook No. 52 is already in operation on the Saratoga & North Creek. It will soon be joined by the former No. 56. Ellis tells Trains News Wire that Metro East Industries in East St. Louis, Ill., put the unit back in operating condition. “It is going to the [Saratoga & North Creek], and will be painted in North Creek. It will go into service this spring with sister 52,” Ellis says. The unit will be painted in the SNC’s blue and silver quasi-Delaware & Hudson scheme.
Another ex-Bangor & Aroostook BL2 is on the Lackawaxen & Stourbridge Railroad in Pennsylvania. Two Western Maryland units have been preserved at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore and the Durbin & Greenbrier Valley Railroad in West Virginia respectively. Former Monon BL2 No. 32 is at the Kentucky Railway Museum in New Haven, Ky.
