A deal has been struck between Ed Bowers, the Minnesota Transportation Museum and the Youngstown Steel Heritage Foundation to acquire the ARMCO B-71, a 1930 Westinghouse Visibility Cab locomotive and bring it to Youngstown, Ohio for preservation and eventual restoration.
The B-71 is currently located at the Minnesota Transportation Museum and is a thoroughly rusted hulk. Although its condition is rough, its historic significance warrants preservation. The Visibility Cab locomotives were the first diesel locomotives built that incorporated the novel feature of placing the engineer in a separate cab. All diesels built before the Visibility Cabs were of boxcab design.
Two Westinghouse Visibility Cab locomotives exist, the B-71 and the B-73. B-73 is at the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum in Washington, PA. I will post photos of both B-71 and B-73 to this thread. (you can tell the two apart easily. The B-73 is orange and black, the B-71 is rust colored!
The B-71 will move from St. Paul to Youngstown on a flatcar sometime in 2011. Meanwhile, the YSHF will be constructing an enginehouse for it at a local industrial park, as well as raising funds to pay for the movement of this historic locomotive.
There is a third one preserved in Canada, CN77 (ex 7700). It can be found at Exporail, just outside Montreal. The Westinghouse electrics were housed in a carbody built by the Canadian Locomotive Company of Kingston (Ontario) in 1929 using the same visibility cab design. The diesel inside was from Beardmore, replaced by a Caterpillar in the early 1950s. Last I heard the locomotive was no longer operable but it is still well-preserved.
It is shown here in 1969 switching out CPR’s first diesel, a unique piece custom-built in 1937. CPR apparently ignored the reality that mass production of standard designs by Alco and EMC had just become the way of the future.
We have begun construction of a reusable flatcar loading ramp that will be utilized for the loading and unloading of the B-71. The goal here is to get the locomotive to Youngstown at the lowest possible cost. The B-71 needs so much work that we would rather spend the money we raise on restoration instead of transport. Loading via the ramp will save approx. $5,000 in crane costs at each end.
In the beginning of the Pentrex video B&O Odyssey Vol 1,you can see the B-71 working at Armco in Butler,Pa. The scene is very short,but pretty cool nonetheless.
