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Electro-Motive Diesels, Inc. is the world's largest builder of railroad locomotives. General Electric is (narrowly) No. 2, and between them they have built the overwhelming majority of the locomotives in service in North America and a large proportion of those in the rest of the world as well. EMD can lay claim to being the company that ended the dominion of the steam locomotive on the world's railroads, by both producing high-quality, reliable locomotives, and just as importantly (maybe more so) knowing how to sell them. That the victory of the diesel locomotive over the steam locomotive was, outwardly, such an easy and rapid one is thanks to the marketing and sales skill of EMD, backed by its aggressive and confident corporate parent.

History

Electro-Motive Engineering was founded in Cleveland, Ohio in 1922 by H. L. Hamilton and Paul Turner. The next year, the company sold only two gasoline-powered rail motor cars, one to the Chicago Great Western and the other to the Northern Pacific. They were delivered the following year, and worked well - fortunately for the fledgling company, because the sales were conditional on satisfactory performance. The next year, 1925, the company changed its name to Electro-Motive Corporation (EMC) and entered full-scale production, selling 27 railcars.

In 1930, General Motors, seeing the opportunity to expand into a new field ripe for the picking, purchased the company and also its engine supplier, Winton Engine. Advancing from railcars, the company began building multi-car diesel streamliners, for the Union Pacific among others. By 1935, GM felt confident enough to invest in a brand new factory in La Grange, Illinois, which is still the corporate headquarters. By the end of the 1930s, EMC had a diesel engine powerful and reliable enough for road locomotive use. The 567, named for its displacement-per-cylinder of 567 cubic inches (9.3 L), was a two-cycle (or two-stroke) supercharged engine with overhead camshafts and four exhaust valves per cylinder. It was built in V6, V8, V12 and V16 configurations. The new technology found its first uses in glittering prow-nosed passenger locomotives, but EMC's eye was on the meat - freight service. The glamorous passenger services made little money for the railroads; capturing the freight market from the steam locomotive would be the ultimate prize. The company produced a multi-unit freight locomotive demonstrator, the EMD FT, and began a tour of the continent's railroads to demonstrate it.

The tour was a success; Western roads in particular saw their prayers of freeing themselves on their dependence on scarce, expensive desert water supplies for steam locomotives answered in the FT. By 1940 EMC was producing a locomotive a day and had reached 600 in service. General Motors merged EMC and Winton Engine to create the Electro-Motive Division (EMD) on January 1, 1941.

World War II temporarily stopped EMD locomotive production - the diesel engines were instead required in Navy ships - but in 1943 production of locomotives restarted. More locomotives were needed to haul wartime supplies. The war, however, was in the end a godsend for EMD; while it was allowed to continue to develop the diesel locomotive and to sell it to railroads, its competitors in the locomotive industry - principally the American Locomotive Company (Alco) and the Baldwin Locomotive Works - were prohibited from any developmental work with diesel road locomotives. They were instead ordered to produce diesel switchers and steam locomotives to pre-existing designs, as fast as they possibly could. This delayed EMD's competition and dealt them what was in the end a fatal blow. By the end of the War, EMD's diesel production was in full swing, with a new improved freight locomotive in production, the EMD F3, as well as new passenger EMD E-units.

The story of diesel's conquest of steam is better placed elsewhere, but a combination of many factors weakened steam's position and strengthened that of the diesel locomotive, and by the late 1940s to early 1950s, the majority of American railroads had decided to dieselize. While other builders had entered the diesel locomotive field - whether old steam builders like Baldwin, Alco and Lima, or newer competitors like Fairbanks-Morse, also a producer of Navy diesels in the war - EMD's extra years of experience told. Most railroads ordered a few units from several different builders in their first, trial purchase -- but the second, volume order more often than not went to EMD. Most of these were sales of its freight F-Unit platform - the EMD F3 and later EMD F7 - but their passenger E-Unit locomotives just as quickly replaced their steam counterparts with shiny new EMD E7 and later EMD E8 locomotives. The economic arguments for diesel over steam were a bit shakier than those for freight service, but it hardly mattered - passenger service was more a matter of rolling advertisements and publicity machines than actual profit by this late date, and what railroad wanted to be behind the times?

In 1949, EMD opened a new plant in London, Ontario which was operated by subsidiary General Motors Diesel (GMD), producing existing EMD as well as unique GMD designs for the Canadian domestic and export markets. That same year, EMD introduced a new, revolutionary locomotive - the EMD GP7. Called a road switcher type, its design was that of an expanded diesel switcher, with the diesel engine, main generator and other equipment in a covered, but easily removed, hood (thus the other name for these locomotives, hood units). This hood being narrower than the locomotive, this enabled the crew to have visibility in both directions from a cab placed near to one end. The structural strength in the road-switcher was in the frame, rather than in a stressed carbody in earlier locomotives. The maintenance ease of this new type of locomotive won over the railroads in short order - faster, indeed, than EMD truly expected. With very few exceptions, all locomotives produced in the United States for domestic use since the 1960s have been hood units.

One by one, EMD's competitors bowed out of the race. Lima failed first, merging with Baldwin and engine builder Hamilton in Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton or BLH, but the Baldwin-led company didn't last too much longer. Fairbanks-Morse, after producing a series of innovative locomotives that sold poorly, left the locomotive field (the company is still in business, in its original markets). Before long, only Alco remained, aided by the industrial might of General Electric, who manufactured the electrical gear used in Alco diesel-electric locomotives. GE itself entered the locomotive market in the early 1950s with the introduction of gas turbine-electric locomotives, and by the late 1950s GE developed its own line of diesel-electrics as well.

The 567 engine was continuously improved and upgraded. The original 6-cylinder 567 produced 600 horsepower (450 kW), the V12 900 horsepower (670 kW), and the V16 1350 horsepower (1010 kW). EMD began turbocharging the 567 around 1959; the final version, the 567D3A (built 10/63 to about 1/66) produced 2500 horsepower (1860 kW) in V16 form.

In 1966 EMD introduced the enlarged 645 engine. Power ratings were 1500 hp (1.1 MW) V12 non-turbo, 2300 hp (1.7 MW) V12 turbo, 2000 hp (1.5 MW) V16 non-turbo, and 3000 hp (2.2 MW) V16 turbo. EMD also built a turbocharged V20 that produced 3600 hp (2.7 MW) for the SD45, but that was their first and last 20-cylinder engine. The final variant of the 16-cyl 645 (the 16-645F) produced 3500 hp (2.6 MW).

The 645 was replaced by the 710 in 1988. The 710 was the last two-stroke locomotive engine produced by EMD. They introduced the four-stroke 265H in 1997.

By 1960, dieselization of American railroads was effectively complete. EMD had won. The 1960s saw EMD consolidate their position as the dominant locomotive builder in the USA; new, high power locomotives, like the 3000 horsepower (2.2 MW) EMD SD40 and the 3600 horsepower (2.7 MW) EMD SD45 V20 were produced and proved highly successful.

In 1969, Alco left the locomotive field, leaving GE as EMD's only domestic competitor (Montreal Locomotive Works continued to produce Alco designs under license in Canada). 1969 also saw EMD produce the most powerful diesel-engined locomotives to date; the twin-engined, 6600 horsepower (4.9 MW) EMD DDA40X Centennial locomotive for Union Pacific.

In 1972, EMD introduced computer control systems with the 'Dash-2' line; the EMD SD40-2 became possibly the most successful locomotive design in history. 3,945 were built; if the other SD40 class locomotives are included, a total of 5,752 were produced. The vast majority are still in service on American railroads. Later, in the 1980s, EMD's computer control systems on locomotives became more advanced, with computer controlled wheelslip prevention among other systems.

After the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement came into effect in 1989, EMD decided to consolidate all locomotive production at the GMD plant in London, Ontario; a development which ended locomotive production at the Lagrange, Illinois plant in 1991, although the Illinois facility still produces large diesel motors.

The early 1990s saw EMD introduce two new innovations; AC electric transmission for increased reliability and tractive effort at low speeds, and the radial steering truck which reduced wheel and track wear. The decade also saw locomotives increase in power to 6000 horsepower (4.5 MW) from a single prime mover, in the EMD SD90MAC-H locomotive.

1999 saw Union Pacific place the largest locomotive order in history - and it went to GM EMD, for the EMD SD70M locomotive.

Present day

2004 saw CSX take order of the first SD70ACe locomotives that are designed to be more reliable, fuel efficient, and maintainable than its predecessor AC locomotive the SD70MAC. This model also meets the stringent EPA Tier 2 emission requirements using the tried and true 2-stroke 710 diesel engine.

2005 has seen the first delivery of the SD70M-2 DC locomotive to the Norfolk Southern, building on the heritage of the work horse SD70M locomotive that has set a new bar for reliability in the rail industry. Like its sister locomotive, the SD70ACe, the SD70M-2 meets the stringent EPA Tier 2 requirements and uses the same engine.

General Motors sells the Electro-Motive Division

In June of 2004, the Wall Street Journal published an article indicating that EMD was being put up for sale. On January 11, 2005 Reuters published a story indicating that a sale to "two private U.S. equity groups" was likely to be announced "this week".

Confirmation came the following day with a press release issued by GM. General Motors has agreed to sell its Electro-Motive Division to a partnership led by Greenbriar Equity Group LLC and Berkshire Partners LLC. The newly spun-off company is called Electro-Motive Diesel, Inc., which retains the EMD brand that is so widely known in the railroad industry. The sale closed on April 4 2005. It is unknown what impact the change in ownership will have on the future of the company.

See also

• List of GM-EMD locomotives

External links

• Electro-Motive Diesel, Inc. - official company website

References

• General Motors Electro-Motive Division
• General Motors Corporation (January 12 2005), GM Agrees To Sell Electro-Motive Division. Retrieved January 12 2005.
• General Motors Electro-Motive Division (April 4 2005), Greenbriar Equity Group and Berkshire Partners Complete Acquisition of Electro-Motive from General Motors. Retrieved April 13 2005.
• Reuters (January 11 2005), GM to sell locomotive unit this week.
• Trains News Wire (March 3 2005), EMD’s new initials will be…. EMD. Retrieved March 8 2005.

• Locomotive manufacturers