First Morrison-Knudsen rebuild

I’m wondering if anyone knows what MK’s first rebuild was in the early 70s. It might be the Ex ALCo C636 demonstrator #5401. I saw a picture of it in rebuilt form that was dated 1970, but this seems a little early to me, as the Boise shops were opened in 1972.

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I would like to know it too, but no one seems to know. So how about making a list of the work of M-K (and MPI) here? I have visited the US three times and encountered three types of locomotives.

The first was BN’s E9A in June 1998. At that time, I saw it in Chicago after it had been retired, and in Washington DC, where it had started working for MARC.



The next was Utah Railway’s MK5000Cs in February 2008. It was located in Soldier Summit, Utah, on the UP line (formerly D&RGW).


The MP36PH-3C in Salt Lake City, Utah, before the FrontRunner opened.


Then, a very interesting BN-related locomotive is the D&H PA-4. In 1967, the railroad acquired four PA-2s from AT&SF, and used them for passenger trains, replacing the red with blue in the Warbonnet livery. In 1975, they were sent to Morrison-Knudsen in Boise, Idaho, to be upgraded to PA-4s. On the return journey, they were installed in Amtrak trains, one at a time. Two of them were coupled to the front of a San Francisco Zephyr.

According to the “Burlington Northern 1975-76 Annual” (image source), No. 16 and No. 19 were coupled to the front of a double-head SDP40F from Denver to Chicago. Incidentally, the other two were between the locomotive and the passenger cars, No. 17 was an Empire Builder, and No. 18 was a North Coast Hiawatha.

I look forward to seeing many of your submissions.

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I don’t have any pictures, as I’ve never really done any railfanning, I just enjoy history and wanted to set the record straight. Great photographs, especially the ALCos on Amtrak.

Same here. I enjoy others photos since I have none of my own.

Rich

Can’t forget MK’s F40PHM-2C, my favorite diesel locomotive. Five of a kind built for North County Transit in the mid 90’s. I used to see them all the time until they were retired in 2021.


I actually took this photo shortly before they were retired.

What was the original build date ?

Rich

That picture of D&H 19 makes me reeeealy want a model of the 19 (or any one of those 4) to run at the head end of my long distance early Amtrak train in N scale lol. Thats an awesome image right there, love it! Thanks for sharing it!

  1. Technically they weren’t rebuilds, MK built them new from EMD and MK components, plus some remanufactured parts.