A new preservation group, Northeast Rail Heritage, Inc., announced Tuesday (Dec. 3) that it has purchased former Amtrak AEM7 electric locomotive No. 927, built in 1981 for high-speed passenger service on the Northeast Corridor and Keystone Corridor. It was retired in 2016.
Using technology from ASEA-built Statens Järnvägar (Swedish State Railways) Rc4 B-B locomotives, General Motors’ Electro-Motive Division built 54 of the four-axle, 7,000-hp units between 1978 and 1988.
No. 927 joins three others of its type in preservation: No. 915 at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg, Pa., No. 917 at the Danbury Railway Museum in Danbury, Conn., and No. 945 at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Ill. The unit is currently stored at Seaview Transportation, a Rhode Island short line, where it was among three remaining out of an original pool of 15 retired AEM7s held there.
Organized in 2023 by a group of current and retired railroaders, NRH gained nonprofit Internal Revenue Service 501(c)3 status last summer. Based in the Baltimore area but incorporated in Pennsylvania, the group is talking with several railroads about a place to store the unit while it seeks a permanent home in the Baltimore or Philadelphia areas.
Mike Huhn, 33, an Amtrak engineer on the Northeast and Keystone corridors, serves as president of NRH. For now, he says, the group consists only of a board but expects to eventually offer memberships.
Breaking a preservation stigma
“One of the big things I noticed in today’s rail preservation environment, and not to discount it, but there’s a heavy emphasis on steam and vintage diesels,” he told Trains News Wire. “Very few groups have gone after modern stuff. Railroading Heritage of Midwest America recently restored a Santa Fe B40-8, so you’re starting to slowly see some groups take notice of [such] items.” [See “RMHA debuts repainted Santa Fe GE locomotive,” Trains News Wire, Oct. 20, 2024].
“[But] my goal is to break that stigma of ‘There’s no point in preserving anything after steam.’ I’m 33, and there’s a lot of stuff I’ve seen when I was a kid that’s often been overlooked – F40s and different kinds of diesels that [everyone said], ‘Well, this will be around, that will be around.’ One of these days it’s going to be gone.
“I would hate to have seen that kind of way of thinking affect the AEM7. Me being a millennial, that’s what I grew up seeing on Amtrak. Nothing should be overlooked. Every piece of equipment has a story to tell. Steam did, the F-units did, now it’s . . . things that my generation took for granted.”
The leaders of NRH have deep experience in both practical railroading and preservation. Huhn was a Norfolk Southern conductor and engineer before moving to Amtrak in 2019. He started volunteering as a youth with Pennsylvania Trolley Museum, and later joined the crew of Nickel Plate Road No. 765, operated by the Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society. He also has worked as a diesel engineer for Western Maryland Scenic, put time in on the track crew at East Broad Top. and worked as a trainman and steam fireman at the Wilmington & Western Railroad in Delaware.
Ryan Merrill, an Amtrak engineer from Washington, D.C., is NRH vice president. Previously he held train-and-engine-service jobs and then trainmaster at Strasburg Rail Road. Secretary-Treasurer Steve Johnson worked for Conrail, CSX and Amtrak, from which he retired as an engineer. Anthony Raspantini, another Amtrak engineer who is based in New York City, serves as chief mechanical officer.
NRH organized loosely in 2023 with a list of candidate equipment acquisitions, but at first lacked nonprofit status. Huhn said the group quickly settled on AEM7 No. 927 when Raspantini called attention to the fact that it was available as one of a handful of units that was headed for scrapping earlier this year.
Seaview Transportation had held 15 Amtrak AEM7s in storage awaiting a possible lease or sale to Boston’s Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which was considering electrification of some of its commuter service. When MBTA decided to stick with diesels, scrapping began.
“I got in contact with Eric Moffett, general manager of Seaview, and asked what it would take to get hold of that engine,” said Huhn. “It took a couple months’ worth of phone calls, and at the beginning of November [the agreement] was finalized.” He declined to name the sale price, but said the group now owns the locomotive free and clear.
“The AEM7 almost could have been lost to the sands of time,” he said. ”Miraculously, a group of 15 hung on. Thankfully, there are three others that have been preserved.”
The 927, he said, could be cosmetically restored but “is mechanically intact” enough that operating it isn’t completely beyond reach. He said the next step is to start a “fundraising campaign, in multiple phases, to get the engine moved and gradually restored.”
Origin of the AEM7s
Known as either “toasters” for their carbody shape or “meatballs” for their Swedish roots, the AEM7s allowed Amtrak to retire its initial electric fleet of 1940s-era former Pennsylvania Railroad GG1 2-C+C-2 units and downgrade its troubled group of 26 General Electric E60 C-C units dating from 1974, which exhibited tracking problems at high speed.
Limited to 85 mph, the E60s proved not to be a practical successor to the GG1s, so Amtrak chose a new design based on the proven ASEA unit. AEM7s had no trouble achieving sustained speeds of 125 mph to match the performance of aging and increasingly unreliable electric multiple-unit Metroliner trainsets.
Eventually, Siemens ACS64 electric locomotives and high-speed Acela trainsets (running at 135 to 150 mph) displaced the AEM7s. On June 18, 2016, a sold-out “Farewell to the AEM7” trip with doubleheaded units 942 and 946 ran from Washington to Philadelphia and back.
Seaview still has the 940 and the 946, and Huhn expects that because the 946 was the trailing unit on the Farewell run, and because it was also the last Amtrak AEM7 in service (retired August 2016), it, too, could be spared.
— Updated at 9:40 a.m. CT with new photo credit on current photo of locomotive.
And one EMD E7A is preserved . One. There were 510 E7A and E7B units built, the most of any passenger model.
(PRR 5901 at RR Museum of PA)
In the 1950s and 60s, the “Greatest Generation” allowed the Alco DL109 & 110 and the Alco PA & PB diesel locomotives to slip through their fingers while totally focusing on preserving steam locomotives. It was a missed opportunity for the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum founded in Chattanooga in 1961 to seek at least some of the last six Alco PA’s built in 1953 which Southern Railway retired less than a decade later. Ironically, the units were the first PA’s scrapped although they were the last built.