In early 1964 they placed an order for a pair of E9’s and 12 EMD GP28’s. The Geeps were built and delivered but the E’s never were. Does anyone have any particulars on the cancellation of what would’ve been the final two E units? Reason for cancellation, was the order shifted to another model, etc?
Of course, this didn’t conclude their additions to their E unit fleet. In 1969 they traded 5 retired E7’s to Precision National for the five former FEC E9’s. And then there are their four executive E’s from the late 1990’s.
Just a guess on my part, but I suspect with the passenger train dying by the mid-sixties an order for passenger locomotives was probably considered a waste of money. Better to put the money into freight units and try to keep the existing passenger units alive as long as possible.
That would fly if I was asking why they never ordered new passenger power after their last E9 was delivered in 1961, But they did place an order for two E9’s in early 1964. So lack of faith in the passenger business and considering it a waste of money doesn’t seem likely. Those would be reasons why you wouldn’t place an order in the first place.
So there must be something more to it than that to precipitate such a last minute decision like success in a train-off application that suddenly reduced their demand for passenger power, a management change that saw a last minute reversal of a predecessor’s decision, etc. Was hoping someone had some specifics.
Looks like there’s some question that an order was ever placed for the FP45’s. But EMD did set aside builders numbers for them. Apparently that sometimes happened on speculation when they felt an order was in the bag so at the very least they must’ve seriously considered it.
My suspicion is that if you look at the progress and timing of the NRPC legislation that created Amtrak, you will have answers to the 1969 questions. I can easily see replacing E7s with E9s late in the game. But buying expensive new cowl-unit power just in time for it either to be turned over to the Government or have to be used in freight service makes relatively little sense…
Could they have had some management changes during the time between the placing of the order and the actual construction of the units? I don’t even mean the President or Chairman but officers in charge of Motive Power?
A comparison of Official Guides from a couple years either side of '64 may provide insight. Passenger runs were being discontinued during that period. What trains were combined or cancelled then which would have reduced the need for passenger power? Management always looks at the financial sheets, and cutting a couple trains and two locomotives would be a way to make the numbers better for the stockholders.
There was little change in IC passenger service in the period 1964-1967. The Memphis-Greenville train was discontinued after January of 1965, and the next abolition came by April of 1967, when the SouthernExpress was discontinued south of Carbondale, the Creole was discontinued between Memphis and Carbondale, and the northbound Louisiane ran only from Memphis to Chicago. So, there was not much immediate change after the mail service was reduced.
I did not check for upper echelon personnel changes.
I’m sure that could easily be the explanation on why the FP45’s didn’t come to fruition.
But it’s also power that could also be easily converted for freight use when that time came. So even if they just projected a handful of more years of passenger train usage, they wouldn’t just be getting the savings and efficiency from that limited period of time with a nearly new and almost worthless investment left afterwards. They could easily be shifted to freight use as other FP45 owners and those that had purchased various SDP’s during the 1960’s showed and continue making money for their owners on freight [Edit: And I forgot about Santa Fe’s passenger U-Boats that similarly became full time freight power].
So that’s a bit different then if E9’s (Or if 645 engined E10’s had taken their place) were still cataloged in 1969 that had limited freight utility and a limited future ahead of them. The only money making future for most E units after Amtrak was cannibalization of their parts or hope of selling them to Amtrak or government supported commuter lines for further passenger use.
And that was no guarantee as Illinois Central’s own E8’s and E9’s are evidence of that largely languished in dead lines into the 1980’s when sales didn’t come about (Hopefully combined with a rebuild at Paducah) and then as their parts were slowly harvested for switchers when they gave up trying to shop them around.
When NJ Transit contracted to rebuild a batch of E8A’s that it received as part of the establishment of Conrail, Paducah rebuilt and returned at least three ex-IC E8A’s to NJT as part of the program. A corresponding number of NJT E8A’s were kept by ICG as trade-ins.
Yep, there was a limited amount of success on that front.
They even sold one of their rebuilds to Amtrak that they had designated as a E10 (Which is one possible explanation for why they didn’t follow through on the FP45’s since that rebuild program was initiated right around the same time at Paducah). But Amtrak didn’t pick up the other rebuilds for whatever reason.
And several non rebuilt and rebuilt sisters were leased to Amtrak for a time and some even were repainted. But only those four appear to have been resold for further use as locomotives (And the NJT three took until 1978 before it happened) and Amtrak leases stopped by 1974. So that left a lot of E units that were just languishing for many years that they had hoped to be able to sell but couldn’t.
Just before scrapping started on them, they rebuilt a B unit as a HEP car for the Alaskan Railroad. But well over 20 IC E8’s, E9’s, and “E10’s” went to scrap in the early 1980’s when they finally gave up and parted them out and cut up the remains (Plus a further three units went to scrap thanks to the two traded in PRR E8’s and the single NYC E8 from NJT that you cited).
So all in all it wasn’t a very succcessful effort to resell them to other operators like they had hoped to be able to do. They had much better luck selling and rebuilding the GM&O F units.
Management of the IC created the holding company Illinois Central Industries in August 1962. Although ICI didn’t make any major non-rail business acquisitions until 1968 (when it bought American Brake Shoe, known as “Abex”), Wayne Johnston became president in 1965 and was the primary architect of ICI’s waltz through the world of morphing into a non-rail company. I suspect the prior senior management (when the E9’s were ordered) had discussions with the incoming leadership and the decision was made to spend the $s elsewhere.
I believe the answer is that EMD decided to drop the model from the catalog. The other late buyers of E-units SAL and UP converted their orders to SDP35s.
I wonder had EMD continued to build new E-units post-1965, an “E10" or even “E40" would have had two 12-645s instead of 12-567s and replaced the E-style carbody and bulldog nose with a FP45-style cowl and cab?
Out of curiosity, are you basing that belief off the fact that some late E unit buyers bought SDP35’s shortly afterwards?
I don’t know about the Louisville & Nashville or the Atlantic Coast Line, but the Union Pacific and the Seaboard Air Line wanted locomotives that could handle both freight and passenger service. The Union Pacific for instance generally only used their SDP35’s on Vietnam era troop train extras with them otherwise usually sticking to freight services.
So I’m not sure if the existence of the SDP35 that was being bought as part-time passenger power is necessarily is an indication of the status of the E9 in their catalog in 1964. The E9 simply wasn’t suited for the type of service those two lines were looking for in 1964/1965 so that could just as easily explain why they went for that instead of more E9’s.
Doesn’t sound too likely to me when a single turbocharged 12 cylinder 645 could put nearly the same horsepower out as an E9. I imagine something along the lines of Union Pacific’s rebuild program for their executive E9’s in the 90’s is closer to what a late 60’s E unit would’ve been minus the Dash 2 electronics that didn’t exist yet and probably with turbocharging of its single 16 cylinder engine for more than 2,000HP.
And their next generation passenger locomotive with economized styling of course did exist in the form of the FP45. If an expensive specialized passenger locomotive had existed instead of a repurposed freigh
An E-unit with 645 engines was highly unlikely. In the same July 1965 issue which introduced the 645 line to readers, David P. Morgan also observed that this was the fourth model change for EMD without a new E-unit model and the only passenger-equipped model in the new line (SDP40) could be available for freight service without so much as the turn of a wrench.
As you point out though, a design like that is not as ergonomic/crew friendly when converted to freight service…
I do note that ALCO pitched ATSF on a cowled passenger version of the C636 and one of their proposals would have had a nose and cab design inspired by the PA series, so it’s an interesting “what if”…
E (and F) units had a truss-style car body which carried most of the loads, whereas GPs and SDs had (as SDs do today) a fabricated steel double tee-section on steel plate underframe as the load carrying part of the carbody. Es and Fs were more expensive to produce than GPs or SDs. As for twin engines … A sinle engine was more economical to manufacture ( as it is today) and operate.
Two normally aspirated 12 cyl 645’s would have been good for 3,000hp, while a significant boost above an E-9, it was the same as the turbo’ed V-16 in the SDP40. One advantage the E would have had over the SDP40 is tracking and ride at high speeds (>90 MPH), but such high speeds were becoming rare in 1964 (at least in the US). OTOH, a twin V-12 645 engined E wold have been a neat sight.
Probably the closest descendent of the E’s is GE’s P42, with more than double the power of the E6 &E7 with just four axles instead of six.