The "10 Locomotives That Changed Railroading" guide packaged with my new subscription states that the earliest EMD FT A and B units were articulated. Looking at the photos, however, I can't see any evidence of a common truck between the units. In what sense were they "articulated"?
They were not articulated. The first FTs were delivered as pairs, 1 A and 1 B semi-permenently connected by a drawbar so that the brotherhoods could not claim that they were 2 locomotives and required 2 crews. When this issue was resolved virtually all were converted to couplers
EMD FT's were not articulated. The original AB sets had a drawbar between the A and B unit. This was not done to appease unions(that issue with 'boosters' was already settled). It was done so EMD only had to provide a single set of batteries/charging equipment on one of the units.
ATSF specified 'couplers', hostler controls, and D/B equipment on their order. EMD had a special coupler with a 'reverse down' curve in the shank made so that the could use the existing drawbar attachment. There was no draft gear on the rear A unit or forward B unit.
What the unions(and it was basically the Western Roads Agreement) wanted was a crew in every cab unit if there was no permanent drawbar. C&NW broke this with their AA sets of E3's, but got away with it as they argued the engines were for use on dedicated 400 trains. A few years later, they bought E6A engines and started breaking them up, but only in a single A or a back to back AA combination(no MU on the nose of these units).
With the FT, the unions started to push the issue - but WWII intervened and the Fed's informed all parties that there was a war effort on and they were being 'unpatriotic'. EMD was concerned enough that they offered to drawbar Ali 4 units in a typical FT set at no charge. Since ATSF was the major buyer of FT's, they had a lot of exposure. To increase production of FT's, they started receiving a lot of B units with no matching A's (the cab units took longer to build). Many WWII era ATSF photo's have ABBB sets of FT's in the picture. Another reason for all of the B units was that they were protected on the original agreement. Eventually the matching A units were delivered. An interesting fact is that EMD engineering folks refer to the ATSF units as model 'FS'(I guess that stand for Santa Fe).
After the war, a lot of railroad upgraded their FT's with things like couplers, battery sets, and nose MU connections. A lot of 'internal' upgrades took place as well. One of the problems with these upgrades were that the actual 567 engine went through at least 3 versions in the FT. The early ones got the 'U' or 'V' block engines, after about 1943 EMD settled on the 567A power plant. Even upgrading the 567A was an issue as it had different timing gears that the later 567B power plant. Eventually EMD offered special 'trade-In' programs just for FT's.
Jim
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
You gentlemen are correct, the FT originally used a drawbar between units and was not articulated, as stated in the article. What makes it worse is that I know better.
David
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