Origins
The SDP40F was the first locomotive built new for Amtrak. Until then most of Amtrak's engines were EMD E-units and F-units that predecessor railroads had used for many years without good maintenance, resulting in breakdowns. The SDP40F was an interim solution.
Based on EMD's ubiquitous SD40-2 freight locomotive, 150 SDP40Fs were built in two years. They had a passenger style carbody instead of the narrow long hood of the freight unit and 57:20 gearing allowed 100 mph (160 km/h). Two Vapor steam generators and a 1,350 US gal (1,124 imp gal; 5,110 L) water tank at the rear of the engine room made the steam needed for heat (and sometimes cooling) and hot water on most of Amtrak's cars. (Another tank below the frame carried 2150 gallons more water.)
EMD based the SDP40F name on the existing SDP40. Several years earlier EMD had made similar versions of the SDP45 and SD45, which it named FP45 and F45. Although the SDP40F was externally nearly identical to the FP45, EMD chose not to give the new locomotive a similar name such as FP40. EMD wanted to avoid adding a new locomotive type to their catalog due to price controls in effect in the early 1970s. The following year the F40C name was used for a similar locomotive ordered by the Milwaukee Road, equipped with HEP instead of steam generators.
Eventually the SDP40F was phased out as all-electric cars, such as the Amfleet, displaced the old steam heat rolling stock. Amtrak was able to trade in the SDP40F to EMD as the head end power-equipped F40PH was acquired.
Read more about this topic: EMD SDP40F
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)