From: elw4@po.CWRU.Edu (Evan L. Werkema)
Newsgroups: rec.railroad
Subject: It's hard to love a GE II
Date: 22 Aug 92 19:17:06 GMT
Reply-To: elw4@po.CWRU.Edu (Evan L. Werkema)
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)


  I traveled into Wisconsin last summer with the sole intention of seeing the 
Green Bay & Western.  I had heard about the WC's takeover plans, and figured 
I'd better see one of the last solid-ALCo regionals while I could.  Well, I 
must say that, for a person who has never seen an operating Century before, 
the sight of three C424's on one train was quite a thrill.  They looked so
different from anything on the Class-1's today that it seemed strange to 
think that these engines are contemporaries of the GP35 and the U25B.
  I was very pleased with myself when I got home, and just to see how rare
a catch those ALCo's were, I looked up the "number in service" in the front
of MacDonald's _Diesel Locomotive Rosters-Second Edition_.  Out of about 190 
C424's built, 70 were left, about 36%, not too bad.  Just for kicks, I looked
up the GP35 and U25B to see how well the other competitors had fared over the 
long hual.  As one would expect, there are still hundreds of GP35's rattling
around after a prodution total of around 1300.  But what surprised me was the
U25B tally.  Out of 478 built, 50 were still in service when the book came out,
a measly 10%!  Not only is there a lower percentage of U25B's compared with 
C424's, there are numerically fewer too!  And GE is still in business!
  I got another shock when I discovered that in my entire roster 
collection I had only one U25/U28 picture, a rather poor shot of a now gone 
BN U25B.  I had never even considered a special excursion to shoot old GE's.
Suddenly, the GBW didn't seem like such a great thing after all.

  While the eventual demise of the Alcos has been much mourned, I don't seem
to remember hearing too much about the death of the early U-boats.  To make
matters worse, while there are still some solid-Alco regionals, there are 
virtually no solid-GE ones (44-tonners don't count).  Most Class-1's 
purged their U-boats long ago.  Nearly all the U25C's and U28C's are gone
(LS&I had North America's last 2 U25C's, anybody know if they're still
running?) and the B's aren't far behind.  The best railroads for finding 
early GE's I could find (aside from FNM) are Guiford's Maine Central 
(~20 U25B's) and TransKentucky Transportation Inc. (~20 U28B's).  I think
one or two U25B's have been preserved, too, but none of the C's have.  
  Somehow, there just isn't the same thrill, the same romance, if you 
will about chasing down and photographing a U-boat as with a Century, even if 
the boats are rarer.  I can't explain why.  Why does there seem to be a 
stronger attachment to SD45's than to U30C's as both run off their last miles?
Maybe it is just hard to love GE's.

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Evan Werkema---------------------------------------------------elw4@po.cwru.edu
Newsgroups: rec.railroad