Since then, they were based in Altoona, along with the company’s 20-plus office cars. The locomotives wear a version of the former Southern Railway black-and-gray F unit paint scheme, with an image of the railroad’s thoroughbred horse on the nose of each A unit. The cars wear the Norfolk & Western’s classic Tuscan Red paint with gold lettering.
Southern, which merged with N&W in 1982 to create NS, was an early convert to diesel power, acquiring the demonstrator set of FT units that ran an 8,700-mile tour around the United States in 1939-1940. That performance widely proved the practicality of diesel-electric power in heavy freight service. Up to that time, it had been confined to lighter-duty passenger and switching service.
Built by the Electro-Motive Division of General Motors Corp. in 1952, the two A units, Nos. 270 and 271, began life as Baltimore & Ohio F7 locomotives. Rated at 1,800 hp, the A units were previously used by MARC, the Maryland Area Rail Commuter service. The B units, numbered 275 and 276 and rated at 2,000 hp, were built by EMD in 1950 for the Chicago Great Western.
The four were acquired during the administration of CEO Wick Moorman, along with three other Fs of Chicago & North Western, Canadian National, and Canadian Pacific heritage, which were stored for use as parts sources.
When NS acquired the units, it numbered the A units 4270-4271, as the highest-numbered Southern F7 unit was the 4269. The B units were numbered 4275-4276. Within the past year, the digit 4 was dropped from all four when NS’s program to rebuild standard-cab General Electric C40-9 DC-powered units into 4000-series wide-nose AC44C6M AC-powered units grew to reach into the 4200 number series.
The A units featured a camera mounted in the windshield, to provide a closed-circuit signal to TV monitors back in the train. They are also equipped with positive train control.
As built all 4 F7’s were 1,500 HP; not 1800 or 2000. However, subsequent rebuilds may easily have upped the HP to those higher values.
Steve – the AC&W could take one of them and mate it up with the two ex-NS engines for an A-B-A set.
One question might be what this means for AC&W’s other Fs. They were rebuilding two ex-MILW Fs and an ex-BN B unit for business train service.
The 1939-1940 FT demonstrator tour was 83,000 miles, not 8,700 miles.
The current NS strategy is to change the railroad completely to accomplish their shareholder goals and thats just exactly what they have done. The clean sheet idea is ok, but the PSR is a joke. You don’t grow with PSR, you help stock value, but lose customer trust and employee moral goes in the toilet. NS is not finished they have more things to tinker with until they decide thats all they can do, after the smoke clears I don’t know what will be left? The F’s I knew they would get sold at some point along with other equipment. TRAINS just reports on the fan side of this, I wish they would report on the railroader side of whats happened here. Families, towns, businesses, neighborhoods, etc have all been effected with no point of return I am afraid. The next jump is one man crew/autonomous trains, what will jt be?
Reading and Northern is one of the best regionals. They support steam and excursions, they take pride in their employees, they grew their freight business, and they have a large fleet of historic passenger equipment. And they acquired historic diesel units like GP30’s and F units. What other regional in the US does all that? Andy Muller is more of a railfan than Squires will ever be. Moorman was similar to Muller, in fact one of the 765 excursions ran on both NS and RBMN on Aug 22-23, 2015. Squires is taking NS backwards. They are cutting everything PR.
Mr. Glischinski – I have a feeling, with no hard evidence, that the NS A Unit being PTC equipped went a long way to persuade AC&W to go for the pair.
Apparently, the future of railroading growth and pride is with the short lines and regionals!