History
ALCO, Fairbanks-Morse, and Baldwin had all introduced road switchers before EMD, whose first attempt at the road-switcher, the BL2 was unsuccessful in the market, selling only 58 units in the 14 months it was in production. Its replacement, the GP7, swapped the truss-framed stressed car body for the un-stressed body on a flatcar-like frame that EMD’s competitors had used on their road-switchers from the start. Unfortunately, in heavy service, the GP7’s frame would bow and sag over time. The GP7 proved very popular, and EMD was barely able to meet demand, even after opening a second assembly plant at Cleveland, Ohio. Later, locomotives in EMD's GP-series came to be nicknamed ‘Geeps’. Many GP7s can still be found in service today, although most Class 1 Rail carriers stopped using these locomotives by the early 1980s.
Read more about this topic: EMD GP7
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