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Information
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| URL:
http://riceornot.ricecop.com/?auto=92547 |
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| Comments: 3 (Read/Post) Favorites: 0 (View) |
Submitted
on: 02-18-2015
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Category:
Other Vehicle |
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Description:
It's 1981, and a EF-4 electric locomotive pulls one of it's last trains along the South Shore Line.
Several cars back in the freight consist are the brand-new diesels that will soon replace it. By the end of the year, they'd be retired, and with them would go the last pure-electric freight train service in the US. |
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| #1 |
2-18-2015 @ 11:28:50 PM |
| Posted By : Low-Tech Redneck |
Reply | Edit | Del |
At the tail end of WW2, the General Electric company found itself unable to ship a production run of 20 electric locomotives they'd built for the war effort to the Soviet Union due to the deteriorating political situation.
Of all US railroads at the time, only the upper-midwest based South Shore and Milwaukee Road lines had substantial electrified operations and GE hastily modified the units to US gauge and offered them for sale.
(rumor was, they took delivery with the controls still labeled in Russian)
They proved to be adequate workhorses, the Milwaukee units surviving until 74' when that railroad went all-diesel, followed in 82' by the remaining units on the South Shore. Thier intended Soviet heritage meant most people knew them by the nickname "Little Joes", a reference to Joseph Stalin.
3 of the 20 were ultimately preserved in museums, with one of the South Shore units still being operational as of 2013.
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| #2 |
2-19-2015 @ 12:47:59 AM |
| Posted By : Skid |
Reply | Edit | Del |
Would you know the fate of this particular locomotive, by any chance?
[Edited by Skid on 2-19-2015 @ 12:48:23 AM]
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