RAILWAY RECLAMATION.

Railway reports that the Ivatt Diesel Recreation Society proposes to bring to the rails a replica of Britain's first mainline diesel-electric locomotive.

The down Royal Scot, 1 June 1949

Railway photograph.

The diesels were withdrawn in 1968, "before the preservation movement was sufficiently mature to act on their historic significance."

Too true.  The British diesels might have been improved with the Otto Kuhler treatment.

Providence, Rhode Island, 1957

Photograph by Edward Ozog.

Penn Central offered the last of these, retained as a stationary power plant, to preservationists in the late 1960s, with no takers.  (The shell was in rough shape at the time.)

Fortunately, a number of the early Electro-Motive passenger diesels remain.

One lead unit of the first FT diesel survives.  The booster unit is a replica.

Spencer, North Carolina, 29 May 1989

Kevin Hunt photograph.

The locomotive generally regarded as the first successful diesel switcher (which is how the British refer to a "shunting locomotive" if it's made in the USA) is also in preservation.

Jersey City, 2 April 1955

John Dziobko photograph.

There are several early diesels in the collection of the Illinois Railway Museum, located not far from Cold Spring Shops.  The Nebraska Zephyr, with an honest-to-Harold Hamilton E-5 Silver Pilot on the head pin, has the proper certification to be operated on mainline railroads, and it has made appearances on the Burlington Racetrack.

The Superintendent wishes the Ivatt Recreation many days of recreation doing their recreation.