SHOCK AND AWE. The December 2003 issue of Railfan and Railroad includes some photos of the scrapping of Union Pacific's Big Boys. The accompanying article relates the story of a German prisoner of war enroute to a camp somewhere in Idaho who awakens an entire coach of comrades at Cheyenne, Wyoming, to witness an enormous steam locomotive with two sets of eight driving wheels starting a 100 car freight train. Although these Germans had already seen a lot of the United States, when they saw this train (routine in those days) they concluded there was no way their Vaterland could beat the United States.

The locomotive that finally resolved the debate in favor of diesels and ended the hopes for the gas turbine electric was the Electro-Motive Division SD40-2 (the one in the linked image is a former Chicago and North Western unit.) It's not as powerful as the gas turbine or as exciting to watch as a Big Boy, but three or four of them will walk off with a similar size train, and unlike some other diesels I could name, they don't have to be rebuilt after each trip.

The SD40-2 and its successor locomotives have the potential to become world locomotives. Consider the Foster Yeoman Class 59 stone train locomotives (builder specification JT26CW-SS, why not use the North American alpha code and call them FLD40-2s) which Foster Yeoman requested after Electro-Motive demonstrated that a real diesel did not have to have a backup. In the early 1980s, Foster Yeoman was shopping for some switching locomotives. A sales representative for Electro-Motive sold them an SW1500 and convinced them that the company only had to buy one, there was no reason to buy a spare. The sales representative was correct, and Yeoman's experience with the yard switcher convinced them to seek out an SD40 engineered to the British loading gauge. And now, Where Worlds Collide readers, you know that the 59 is not a repackaged 45.