page_title: EMD FT
section_title: Body recognition and appearance
hierarchical_section_title: EMD FT / Body recognition and appearance
caption_attribution_description: The nose of GM 103, the first EMD FT, on display at Railfair '91 at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento, California, May 10, 1991. Photo by Sean Lamb (User:Slambo)
context_page_description: The EMD FT is a 1,350-horsepower diesel-electric locomotive that was produced between March 1939 and November 1945, by General Motors' Electro-Motive Corporation, later known as GM Electro-Motive Division. The "F" stood for Fourteen Hundred horsepower and the "T" for Twin, as it came standard in a two-unit set. The design was developed from the TA model built for the C, RI&P in 1937, and was similar in cylinder count, axle count, length and layout. All told 555 cab-equipped ”A” units were built, along with 541 cabless booster or ”B” units, for a grand total of 1,096 units. The locomotives were all sold to customers in the United States. It was the first model in EMD's very successful F-unit series of cab unit freight diesels, and was the locomotive that convinced many U.S. railroads that the diesel-electric freight locomotive was the future. Many rail historians consider the FT one of the most important locomotive models of all time.
  The first units produced for a customer were built in December 1940 and January 1941 for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and numbered the 100 set.
context_section_description: The FT is very similar to the later F-units in appearance, but there are some differences which render it distinguishable from later EMD freight cab units. The side panels of the FT were different, but it was fairly common for railroads to alter them to make an earlier unit appear later. As built, FT units had four porthole windows spaced closely together along their sides, and B units with couplers on both ends had a fifth window on one side for the hostler position, if equipped with hostler controls.
  The roof is a more reliable indication; FTs had four exhaust stacks along the centerline (flanked by boxy structures if dynamic brakes were included). The radiator fans were recessed within the carbody, and arranged in two pairs, one near each end of the locomotive. Later units have the fans grouped together, and their shrouding extended atop the roof.
  The overhangs of the body past the trucks differ in the FT compared to later units. The B-units of FTs ordered in semi-permanently coupled A-B sets, and those with couplers on both ends, have a large overhang on one end (the coupler-equipped end on the paired units) featured on no other EMD B-units. This is not present on the B-units in semi-permanently coupled A-B-A sets, which were called FTSB units (for Short Booster). At other locations, except the cab front, the FT units have less of an overhang than later units; the trucks appear to be right at the ends of the car bodies.
  As with other early cab units - but unlike "hood" type locomotives - the F (and E) series used the body as a structural element, similar to a truss bridge.  Most of EMD's newer passenger locomotives have a non-structural “cowl” type body built on an underframe derived from freight designs.
caption: The nose of EMD 103 at the California State Railroad Museum in 1991
exif: {}