Untitled Document
Southern Pacific Historic Diesels
Vol 21: EMD Four-Motor and Six-Motor Freight Diesels
By Joseph A. Strapac.
Softcover, 8.5x11", 144 pages, 204 photos, roster information, drawings and detailed photo captions. 2015.
"Beginning in October 1992 with 64 pages, Southern Pacific Historic Diesels has become a twenty-two volume reference shelf, examining in detail almost the entire diesel fleet of everyone’s favorite “fallen flag” rail line—a challenge when it was still around, but sorely missed now that it is gone.
"Five thousand, five hundred eighty-seven diesel units comprised the SP roster between 1939 and 1996. In these pages since 1992, we’ve reviewed all the SP diesels from Alco, Baldwin, Fairbanks-Morse, General Electric and Krauss-Maffei—as well as the Electro-Motive cab units and switchers and most of the freight hood units.
"However, in 2,368 pages of text and pictures, we still managed to avoid discussing six different EMD hood-unit models! Each one was somehow out of step with SP’s normal progression of road unit purchases—forcing us to pigeonhole images and discussion until we could play catch-up ball at the end of the series. That’s the task of Southern Pacific Historic Diesels, Volume 21—to illustrate those locomotives we avoided covering before:
- SD35 (and many subsequent home-made switcher variants)
- GP38-2
- SD38-2
- SD39
- West Colton slugs
- SD70M
Plus our traditional review of pertinent test and demonstrator units, as well as a selection of “graduates” of these classes that went on to new operators.
