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Electro-Motive Division’s Classic Cowl Units -A Color Pictorial by Graham-White
Electro-Motive Divisions Classic Cowl Units -A Color Pictorial- by Sean Graham-White
Hard Cover
136 pages
Copyright 2002
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements 4
Introduction 7
Chapter One - Santa Fe FP45's f3 SDFP45's 9
Chapter Two - Santa Fe F45's LI SDF45's 34
Chapter Three - ex-Santa Fe Lease Fleet SDF45's 52
Chapter Four - Milwaukee Road FP45's 57
Chapter Five - Great Northern and Burlington Northern F45's 64
Chapter Six - Former Burlington Northern F45's - To the Winds 74
Chapter Seven - Doing the Boise "Kitbash" 82
Chapter Eight - The Regional Scene 83
Chapter Nine - Amtrak's SDP4oF 96
Chapter Ten - Santa Fe and Maersk SDF40-2's 110
Chapter Eleven - EMD Test Fleet SDP4OF's 116
Chapter Twelve - Commuter F4OC's 118
Appendix A - Locomotive Specifications C Diagrams 127
Appendix B - Cowl Unit Roster 132
INTRODUCTION
With its request for a "cowl" locomotive, Santa Fe Railway resurrected streamlined locomotive designs from General Motor's Electro-Motive Division. Always an image conscious railroad, Santa Fe had purchased six-axle road-switcher locomotives equipped with steam generators for passenger service, following the lead of other railroads. But these "hood" units, based on the utilitarian freight designs offered by the three North American builders during the 1960's, lacked the sleek appearance of the E and F-units that had been the most common locomotives to lead passenger trains previously during the post-World War II era.
The "covered wagons", as the E's and F's were nicknamed, had been the premier power for not only Santa Fe's passenger trains but also those of most other railroads. The last E-unit left EMD's McCook, Illinois factory at the end of 1963, twenty-six years after the first E-unit had made its mark on the Santa Fe. Since production of the streamlined F-units had ceased several years before, it appeared the end of streamlined locomotive design was at hand, especially since the 1960's witnessed the rapid decline of passenger service for which the streamlined units had been built.
To replace these aging passenger units, the locomotive builders (EMD, General Electric, and Alco) offered off-theshelf freight locomotives equipped with steam generators to heat and cool the passenger-carrying cars. The steam generator was either added to space already available inside the hood, or the frame and hood were lengthened to accommodate it. Such units were often equipped with high-speed gearing to maintain existing schedules.
While these locomotives were perfectly adequate to move a first-class train from point to point, they were a poor aesthetic match for the streamlined passenger cars the railroads had purchased after the war. In 1967, Santa Fe sought an alternative from the builders - would they produce a streamlined design that could pull big trains at passenger speeds and lug heavy freights with equal agility?
General Electric responded with the U3OCG and EMD with the FP45 (fast fading Alco proposed the C636F to Santa Fe in 1968, but this design was never built). Both entered service on the Santa Fe, but it was the FP45 design that became the archetype of the cowl locomotive and, in several permutations, resulted in additional sales. The success of the FP45 led to a pure freight version without a steam generator, the F45. EMD continued to design passenger models that used a similar carbody design for over two decades following the introduction of the FP45.
The cowl car-body, however, also had drawbacks that limited orders for the units. Restricted maintenance access made major work more time-consuming and expensive compared with traditional hood units. The cowl design itself was also more expensive to purchase than the conventional hood unit, and after the advent of Amtrak freight railroads' interest in the appearance of their power diminished. The FP45 and F45, in later years, were some of the first units stored or retired due to the common impression that fuel consumption of the 20-cylinder engine was too high and because of the types' lack of Dash-2 electronics. As this book was completed in mid-2002, only seventeen "Classic Cowls" were still active: the fifteen Metra F40C's, and the two SDP4OF's in EMD's fleet.
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