I find it amazing that this revolutionary (for GE anyway) locomotive has not survived at all. No shortline, no musems or anything. Tragedy if you ask me.
The rail museum in Northeast,Pa has one.NYC 2500.
Neato, I was never able to find any info on them other then “been scrapped”
There are 7 left IIRC. Check Wiki for preservation details.
L&N #1616 is at Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum, Chattanooga, TN. This one may have been sold to ?
Milwaukee #5056 is at Illinois Railway Museum, Union, IL.
Milwaukee #5057 is at Portola Railroad Museum, Portola, CA.
NH #2525 is at the Railroad Museum of New England, Waterbury, CT.
NYC #2500 is at the Lake Shore Railroad Museum, North East PA.
NYC #2510 is parked south of Albany, NY at the Glenmount Power Station.
SP #3100 is at Orange Empire Railway Museum, Perris, CA.
7 remaining out of 478 built!
Yep, New Haven 2525 “The Last Built” is fully restored and up til a boo-boo back a while was operational. It will be again - still looks good…
There’s others left too, like several repowered ones, including 5 ex UP examples that were repowered with 567 engines from B&O f units, and 4 of the SP Sulzer repowered units that remain stored. Not sure of any others though.
Amazing to think that at it’s time was the biggest gun on the rails.
Adrianspeeder
Anyone have some photo’s they can link of the preserved ones? (Including the repowers)
There may be some here
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/locoList.aspx?mid=259
Yes, it was and I often think while trackside watching trains that virtually every old model locomotive on the rails today were “queens of the fleet” at one time, even the little GP9, SD9, etc., etc. That’s progress I guess.
Ah yes, but many GP9’s remain in service, even GP35’s and I was led to believe that the U25B was a better machine then the GP35 which is the strange part.
While the U25B has achieved fame as GE’s first domestic production model, it was hardly GE’s first production diesel locomotive. The Universal line itself goes back to 1954 or 1955 and was a pretty complete line of export locomotives, in fact the first two U25B’s originally carried export designations. GE was also producing standardized industrial designs for a long time. The U25B could be viewed as the next logical step for GE in going from primarily a supplier to the builders to a builder in its own right.
Ok true, I’m not going to argue that point. But it was the first model that made GE a major player in the United States.
Just think though the prime mover of the U25B is still in use today in every GE locomotive but the GEVO and AC6000 everything else uses a verison of the FDL that was introduced by the u-25. Those of you who hate GE can EMD say that I THINK NOT.
Actually, the FDL has been updated over the years to increase HP, just as the 710 is just a beefed up 567 from 1938.
EMD beats GE in that competition.
Not actually the 567 may have been devolped in 1938 but the fdl goes back even further the FDL was a german design brought over here. Also can you take a 567 power assembly and put it in a 710 block no you can not a fdl assm is the same regradless of horsepower.
The FDL is based on a Cooper-Bessemer engine, the in line FWL used in the 70 Ton locomotives and the FVBL used in export locomotives. The first hood unit built by GE with an FVBL was sold to Queensland Railways in Australia in late 1951. This predicted many U 25 features, but not all. I know of no German origin, although the HDL in the AC6000 was based on a Deutz design. You can’t fit an FDL power assembly to an FVBL either! It got the GE name when build went in house about 1959.
You can fit 645 power assemblies to 567C and 567D engines and even to modified 567A and B engines. That takes you back to about 1940. The longer stroke of the 710 doesn’t allow that, but you can’t say it’s hard to find EMD spares that will fit. Just ask GE, they make them! The EMD engine will long outlast an FDL, which is why GE make the parts.
M636C
I’m a fan of the old U-Boats. I thought I read years back that the early models, like the U25 series, had some annoying problems that mechanics and engine crews were not too fond of. Don’t remember if they were electrical or mechanical. Improvements were made with later models.
Anyone know or remember what the problems were?
Yes. They had a 16-notch throttle that was about 3 feet long and situated down low in front of the engineer where only an octopus could manipulate it easily while backing up. The original high-nosed U-25s had a box structure suspended from the cab ceiling that had the throttle attached to it.
The original Cooper-Bessemer engine was not anywhere near as reliable as the 567 used in EMD’s -35 engines, but even that engine had its teething troubles.
The records don’t indicate how many railroads bought the U-boats in order that EMD should have some competition, since FM and Baldwin were gone and Alco was on the way out (domestically, anyhow).
Old Timer