The eldest of OSR's three FP9s, No. 6508 awaits the call to duty at Salford, Ont.
These are good times for aficionados of EMD-design E and F model cab units. On the verge of extinction for decades, the population of classic EMD streamliners in revenue service is actually increasing. Much of the credit for this remarkable renaissance goes to Iowa Pacific president Ed Ellis and his ever-expanding collection of EMD streamliners. Ellis and Iowa Pacific's fleet of vintage EMDs — 23-and-counting Es and Fs with a pair of BL2s thrown in for good measure — are featured in Steve Glischinski's "Ed Ellis' Shopping Spre'E" in Locomotive 2013.
North of the border, another shortline entrepreneur is spearheading a smaller scale cab-unit revival. Jeff Willsie, president of southern Ontario's Ontario Southland Railway has purchased a trio of onetime VIA Rail Canada FP9s. While Iowa Pacific's cabs are being employed in passenger operations in Maine, Colorado, and California, OSR's trio, built for Canadian National by General Motors Diesel in London, Ont., and upgraded to Dash 2 specs by VIA in the mid-1980s, are being reactivated to haul freight on OSR's former-CP branch lines linking Woodstock, Ingersoll, St. Thomas, and Tillsonburg.
OSR 6508, the oldest of the three, is already in service wearing its original road number and a tattered rendition of its 1954 CNR green, black, and yellow passenger scheme applied by Trains Touristiques du-St-Laurent, the Quebec tourist operator that purchased it and another VIA FP9 after their retirement in 1994. Looking worse for the ravages of languishing out of service for a dozen years, the 59-year old cab is a cosmetic disaster, but mechanically sound. Willsie expects to have the unit painted next year.
Conversely, sisters 1400 and 1401 (built as CN 6539 and 6523) are in good condition externally but require mechanical work, including expensive main generator repairs. Last employed on the Goderich Exeter Railway (now owned by Genesee & Wyoming), Nos. 1400 and 1401 are dressed in the blue-and-white colors of Railink, a Canadian shortline network acquired by RailAmerica in 1999.
In the cramped, dimly lit confines of an F-unit engine room, Craig Jolliffe probes the cantankerous main generator of No. 1401, hoping to trace the source of persistent ground relays. If Jolliffe has anything to do with it, OSR will soon have at least an A-A set of FP9s to add to its eclectic fleet of first generation MLWs, Alcos, GMDs and EMDs.
Craig Jolliffe tends to OSR 1401's cantankerous main generator.
Meanwhile, check out Locomotive 2013 for more on Ed Ellis' remarkable fleet of vintage cabs and watch this space for updates on the cab unit revival on Ontario Southland and elsewhere.
More Locomotive 2013 extras, are here, including contents and photo gallery.
See new-generation EMDs being built in photos inside the Muncie, Ind., plant, opened in 2011.
Take a ride aboard a Delaware Lackawanna freight powered by four RS3s.
Read Richard Steinheimer's "Cajon Pass Revisited," from September 1974 Trains.
In the house, OSR 6508 and 1401 in the Salford shop.
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