FL9

Since I mentioned them yesterday in comparison to the GE U50-C’s, here are my only two pictures of EMD’s DD40AX units in actual freight service.  The first is of a pair of DD40AX’s and a SD24 B-unit westbound through Riverside, CA on the same February morning in 1971 that I photographed the UP City of Los Angeles-Challenger.  I was barely able to stop the action with the 1/300 of a second maximum shutter speed on my Kodak 35mm camera.

Union Pacific purchased 47 DD40AX’s from EMD between 1969 and 1971.  EMD created the world’s largest diesel locomotive by pretty much combining two GP40’s on a single frame with two four-axle trucks putting out 6600 horsepower.  My second and final encounter was on a railfan trip to Kansas City in 1975 when three of them roared out of the sunset at Edwards, KS dwarfing a pack of smaller units behind.  I remember wishing they had instead been heading into the sunset with perfect lighting, as the lead unit was none other than the class engine, #6900.

So goes the occasional disappointments of railfanning, and at least the UP has been kind enough to keep #6936 in operation so we can still see this huge locomotive out on the road, and not just a static display in a museum.

To end the work week, here are two slides of older UP freight power.  First we see U28-C #2806 leaving Topeka, KS behind westbound in a cloud of dust over 30 years ago on 11/19/76.

When GE wanted to come up with an even larger locomotive for the UP to match EMD’s DD40AX, they designed the U50-C generating 5000 horsepower by putting the equivalent of two smaller 12-cylinder GE road units on a single frame.  Sitting higher up and with virtually no nose, the engine crew could definitely see down the track ahead.  Here we we see two U50-C’s with an SD24 B-unit in between undergoing an inspection in the yards at Kansas City, KS on 05/24/75.

These big units proved to have multiple problems, and were all removed from service the next year in 1976 and subsequently scrapped.  Saturday morning I will be leaving early for a round trip to Norman, OK to attend a planning session for the Santa Fe Railway Historical & Modeling Society’s convention this June in Oklahoma City.  Stay tuned to see if I come back with a few pictures from the trip. 

Two slides today take us back to a family vacation in California in 1971.  Amtrak was still out there in the future, and each railroad still ran their own passenger trains.  At age 16 with camera and UP timetable in hand, I waited west of the depot in Riverside, California for the arrival of the westbound train 103, the Domeliner City of Los Angeles-Challenger.  UP E-9 #949 led an A-B-B-A lashup pulling a train that stretched out of sight during an on-time arrival at 12:01pm.

A few days later I was waiting further east where the UP main crossed the SP at West Colton as the UP 953 headed up another westbound train 103.  Colton Tower is in the background at the right.

Tomorrow we’ll see some older UP freight power.

In the waning days of the Rock Island’s operations in Oklahoma, one of the shortlines that came into existance was the North Central Oklahoma.  I moved to Enid in 1980 to work for Motorola, and late in December of 1981 two ALCO locomotives arrived in town to operate the ex-Rock Island branch from Enid to Ponca City starting January 1st.  On New Year’s Eve while others were celebrating, I went down to the beginning of the branch line to try to compose a time exposure of the RS-11 and RS-36.  It is not one of my better efforts, but now it is impossible to do over.  The exposure was long enough that you can see the streaks of stars in the sky.

Two years later in July of 1983 a North Central Oklahoma GP7 is trundling along westbound between Calumet and Geary, OK on the ex-Rock-Island Choctaw Route.  This line is operated today by the Austin, Todd & Ladd.

Before long the North Central Oklahoma would vanish as the Katy took over in the form of the Oklahoma-Kansas-Texas railroad.