ALL:
Can anyone tell me more about GMO 1900, the only locomotive that Ingals Shipbuilding of Mississippi built? Why did they build it and was the GMO an on line customer?
What was the disposition of the unit? It looked like a BL unit from EMD.
Ed Burns
Happily retired NP-BN-BNSF from Minneapolis
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Never too old to have a happy childhood!
She was powered by an inline 8 cylinder Superior diesel with Westinghouse switch gear, and was still switching the yards in Meridian Mississippi well into the 1960s. Traded into EMD in 1966 on an order of SD40's. EMD seemed to view it with respect and fascination at the time, but sadly, diesel preservation was virtually unknown at the time so she didn't stand a chance.
In another time and place, maybe she'd of been saved. But EMD didn't view there being much call to save anything, even scrapping their own heritage almost without fail (Such as SAL E6 #3014, exhibited at the New York's World Fair in 1939, traded to EMD in 1964, exhibited by EMD at that year's World Fair, then promptly scrapped afterwards).
EMD took trade-ins (which were all cut up after being picked for parts) in part to improve the market for replacement locomotives. A locomotive that was turned into razor blades couldn't turn up as an alternative to a new locomotive.
CSSHEGEWISCH EMD took trade-ins (which were all cut up after being picked for parts) in part to improve the market for replacement locomotives. A locomotive that was turned into razor blades couldn't turn up as an alternative to a new locomotive.
Destroying a source of spare components was even more the reason behind their policy during their decades of dominance.
Nobody much thought that there was a market for 15-20 year old locomotives until about 1970 when Geep rebuild programs started to popularize the concept, but there was always a market for spare parts. So trade-ins had to be mechanically complete.
EMD always could make an exception, and famously did just that at least twice since they obviously knew there was no threat posed to their business by cooperating in saving asuperannuated E units in an era of train-offs. But sadly there wasn't the internal interest at La Grange nor outside of EMD in diesel preservation until the late 1970's.
While I don't know what context it was used in, Trains reported when this unit was traded in that EMD referred to it as the only one of its kind. Nice that this obscure one-off locomotive caught someone's eye at EMD enough to comment on it in some context.
I'm sure that it pained at least a few folks there that their heritage in particular was almost universally going to scrap.
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