great northern emd gp20

[Anonymous]

does anyone know if gp20's were used as a trailing engine behind a emd sd7, or gp7/9's ? interested in the time area of around 1960-1967, northern minnesota freights operating from duluth thru bemidji or into north dakota. have a sd7 ho now for my set, wondering if the gp20 would be realistic in that capacity. thanks

robert

[beaulieu]

does anyone know if gp20's were used as a trailing engine behind a emd sd7, or gp7/9's ? interested in the time area of around 1960-1967, northern minnesota freights operating from duluth thru bemidji or into north dakota. have a sd7 ho now for my set, wondering if the gp20 would be realistic in that capacity. thanks

robert

The GP20s were top-line power when they were introduced, and a mixture with GP9s is fairly likely early. The arrival of GP30s, GP35s, and U25Bs, pushed the GP9s out of mainline service. Once the SD45s and F45s started arriving the GP20s started the downgrade to secondary services. On the otherhand the SD7s and SD9s tended to stay in Mesabi Range service, both on the docks and in local service on the Range. The pair of dynamic brake equipped SD9s were assigned to service out of Klamath Falls, OR until into the BN era, so seeing the GP20s with the SD7s and SD9s must have been a rare occurance and the most likely time would have been in the last years before the BN merger, when the GP20s had been pushed out of mainline service and the disappearance of Red Ore mines on the Mesabi Range released the SDs for wider usage. 

[GN-Rick]

Beaulieu is quite correct in his assessment. The GP20s were not extremely common on the Iron Range. After their downgrading in the middle 60s with the arrival on the property of newer, more powerful locomotives, they tended to stay out on Lines West, very commonly used on the Great Falls, Helena, Butte lines. However, It's an unwise person who makes absolute statements about the Great Northern. The one constant I've found in my study of that road over the years is that anything, absolutely anything was possible. It's your model railroad, so there's no reason that you couldn't operate a GP20 with an SD7. It simply wouldn't be a common occurrence. Much more likely would have been SD7s and SD9s operating with GN's class GP5s which were assigned largely to the Mesabi Range. One of those could easily be created out of a P2K phase lll GP9 without dynamic brakes-or a GP18. In fact, I have that project in queue in my locomotive shop. Have a great day.