A goat still gallops
When SD40-2 No.5173 rolled out of the erecting shop late in the year 1981, there was nothing spectacular about it.
Her Yellowbonnet paint didn’t shine any brighter than the other 186 that the Santa Fe would eventually sign for as they rolled out the gate of the EMD plant in McCook, Illinois. Other than headlight placement and a few minor company-specific details, she was as generic a unit as there ever was.
She didn’t help vanquish steam in the West like the FTs did.
She didn’t hustle the Super Chief from Chicago to Los Angeles in 39 and ¾ hours like the Warbonnets did.
Nope.
She just tied her hair back, rolled up her sleeves, and went to work pulling freight, laboring to keep the ink black on the company ledger, and to make the stockholders happy with a quarterly dividend.
There would be little if any fanfare as her traction motors kicked up dust off the ballast of Edelstein Hill as she clawed her way up out of the Illinois River valley on her first trip west. She was just another SD40-2 among the thousands that had flooded the rosters of the Class 1s since the model’s inception back in 1972, perhaps causing a ho-hum attitude to the camera-armed railfans standing atop the Santa Fe Road overpass ready to immortalize the scene on Kodachrome. Even though the ATSF fleet was modest compared to that of the Burlington Northern and the Union Pacific, it was becoming mundane to watch one of the 3,000 horsepower machines do its thing, no matter how shiny the paint was.
As she made her way over Cajon, she would not suffer from shortness of breath or altitude sickness or claustrophobia as the Espee and Rio Grande endured at the heights which they frequented, an affliction remedied by the “cooling system modification” that would earn units so equipped the nickname “Tunnel Motors,” and the two aforementioned roads would buy them en masse. Though the big units served SP and the Grande well, the Santa Fe had no need for such, and relied on their standard SD40-2s, the big 20-cylinder SD45-2s, and a smattering of GE units to speed freight over the Transcon.
It was for the 5173 to remain a homogenous entity, toiling away as her creators envisioned, inconspicuous and virtually unchanged from the day an overhead crane rested her body upon a set of curvy HT-C trucks.
Though the railfans might have been less than pleased with the appearance of ‘another SD40-2’ on the head end of a westward rolling freight, the railroad itself was well satisfied.
The model had checked all the boxes on the list.
Reliable.
Durable.
Versatile.
Ease of maintenance.
Horsepower.
Tractive effort.
The designers had found the sweet spot with the 16-cylinder 3,000-horsepower 645E3 prime mover, and the resultant sales knocked it out of the park.
As David P. Morgan once quipped “The Geep is, to coin a phrase, every man’s unit,” so it could be said of the SD40-2 in the 1980s. There was simply no task that she could not handle, either alone or coupled together with other units. Their likes could be found in every corner of this continent, and upon the shores of several others.
They were the standard by which all others would be judged, and when the sales figures were tallied up, she would become one of the biggest sellers of all time; a true testament to those who designed her, to those who built her, and to those who operated her.
Some would even say she was the greatest of all time.
Those that sat aside the 26L stand would most likely not disagree.
But glory is fleeting---
The pinnacle that EMD found itself upon in the 1980s turned into a plateau of sorts, and was eclipsed in the 1990s by General Electric, whose own designers had not been sitting on their haunches.
With mainline assignments now long behind, the SD40-2 has passed the torch of ubiquity to the GE crowd and their Dash-9s and ES44-something-or-others, whose emergence in great numbers led to the dimming of the lights in the hallowed halls of La Grange and London, and an eventual divestment of locomotive interests by General Motors.
It was a portfolio that would eventually fall under the umbrella of Caterpillar, an occasion that perhaps resulted in an unsettling of the earth above the resting places of Dilworth and Kettering, their cries being heard in the echoes as a hammer banged a chisel through the rivets, wresting the EMD builder’s plate from its mount on the side sill, there to clatter and clink to the shop floor; a fate that 5173 would suffer when she gained new paint and the number 1741 was stenciled upon her cab.
The prow of PTC has now spoiled that of her traditional brow, taking on a decidedly Cro-Magnon look that might speak metaphorically to her age, and the sprouting of ground plane antenna and air conditioners from the roofline of its spartan cab add another slightly unsightly, yet useful nature to her form.
But, in the midst of setting them out and picking them up under a Texas summer sun that is best known for broiling the High Plains and all who dare to venture out into the heatwaves rippling and rising from the parched landscape, the crew is unconcerned about such offenses to aesthetics.
She is still the pet of the old heads, the high-time hoggers who populate the terminals at Amarillo and Fort Worth and bid on the local jobs; those who ran the SD40-2s when they still sported Yellowbonnett paint or the Cascade Green of the BN, rolling TOFCs out on the Clovis Sub, or lugging Powder River coal down the old Fort Worth & Denver.
And when they get the chance to widen on her---
They do just that.
With the day’s business concluded in Pampa, there are still cars to pick up in Panhandle as the 341 Local makes its way back west towards Amarillo on a cloudy and cold winter afternoon. With no other traffic in the next block, and staring down a high green peering out from underneath a black Vader hood, the hogger has the 1741 and a stablemate reliving their glory years as he notches out the throttle, a choir singing their guts out in the key of 645-cubic-inches, juicing up traction motors as they devour the CWR of the mainline and spit out the miles---
FAST!
The old girl struts her stuff just like back in the day, never missing a beat or a stroke as she hits the top of her gearing, flat out gittin’ with the program.
If she’s lost anything at all, it isn’t showing as the High Plains of Texas whiz by in a blur.
And in the moment, she’s all alone---
The high iron all to herself; a legend ballin’ the jack like there’s no tomorrow.
For the next 20 miles she owns the Panhandle Subdivision.
There won’t be a GEVO---
A U-Boat or a C-Boat---
A Dash-7 or Dash-8 in sight to witness the spectacle---
To watch her blast through White Deer and Cuyler, horn trumpeting her arrival, echoing off the grain elevators and flushing the resident pigeons to flight---
A once-reigning Queen who’s polished the tarnish off her tiara, hitched up her carriage, and taken herself for a ride.
Pity them that missed it, for it was quite the ride indeed---
A goat letting the whole world know that she really does gallop---
Still.
---Rick Malo©2024
