Portal:Trains/Featured article/Week 23, 2005

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

EMD E-units were a line of passenger train diesel locomotives built by General Motors Electro-Motive Division (EMD) and its predecessor the Electro-Motive Corporation (EMC). Final assembly for all E-units was in La Grange, Illinois. Production ran from May, 1937, to December, 1963. The name E-units refers to the model numbers given to each successive type, which all began with E. The E originally stood for eighteen hundred horsepower (1300 kW), the power output of the earliest model, but the letter was kept for later models of far higher power ratings. Like many early passenger locomotives, E-units used two engines to achieve the rated power. Even so, while E-units were used singly for shorter trains, longer trains needed multiple locomotive units; many railroads used triple units. E-units could be purchased either with or without driving cabs; units with a cab are called A units or lead units, while cabless units are called B units or booster units. B units did contain simple controls for moving them in railroad yards, but they could not be so controlled on the main line. Railroads tended to buy either ABA sets (two driving cab-equipped units facing in opposite directions with a booster in between) or ABB sets (a single driving cab with a pair of boosters).

Recently selected: Franklin B. Gowen - John Bull - Cincinnati, Lebanon and Northern Railway