Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: emd

These diesels, to the uninitiated, were idolized in movies, on TV, and in countless model trainsets, and still are today. It might be the most-modelled diesel of all time. The only railroad that used the "Warbonnet" paint scheme was the Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe (ATSF) Railroad (now Burlington Northern Santa Fe, or BNSF), introducing the scheme on their E1A passenger diesels in 1937. The F-Unit series of freight diesels, like the E1As, were built by EMD from 1939-1960, and the Santa Fe were the first buyers in 1941, continuing to be regular customers for them until the mid-1950s. #347C is the ultimate classic variant of F-Unit, the F7A Phase I, and in this case is equipped for passenger service with 102 m.p.h. gearing and a steam generator (or at least it would have had these things originally). I don't remember the date #347C was built, but it certainly would have been around 1949, as that was when the F7A was introduced, and that's when the Phase Is were, of course, being built.

When I took this, Amtrak ran a seperate Sunday schedule for trains #68 and 69, the "Adirondack" service from NYP-Montreal, with the Sunday Adirondack getting numbers 70 and 71. I've always liked this shot, even if many "serious" photographers haven't. It is a bit abstract, as you can't see the features of the train, so it's more an emotional than a "tech" shot. I hope you like it. :-)

I've always liked this photo, even if many serious photographers haven't. They say it's "boring," but most of them aren't railfans! From the technical point of view, the contrast is a bit low, but since it was a gloomy Plattsburgh winter day, if I were to up the contrast on this, the detail and the grit of the scene would be lost. For the railfans, though, it's a nice shot of an F40PH in the last years of F40 haulage on Train #68, the "Adirondack."

Here's another longtime favorite, even if, like many of my other California pictures, it's a bit overexposed because of the blazing hot weather we had on that trip. This was up in the Sierra Nevada, too. I love the realism of this shot, the fact that these SD40T-2s were so typical of California in those days, and dirty from their intended and frequent service in tunnels.

This photo is a little bit grainy, which is a result of a high-contrast print being fed into a primitive scanner. I apologize in advance for that, but I posted it anyway because I love the composition. Maybe in the future I'll post a rescanned one, but for now this will have to do.

This was an Anglia Intercity arrival, I think, into Norwich Thorpe Street in the Fall of 2000, and one of my first close photos of English, Welsh, & Scottish Class 67 diesels. If the chassis of it looks vaguely F59PHI to you, that would be close. It is a GMLG locomotive, but its capabilities are far beyond anything GM builds for the U.S. market. 125 m.p.h. is an easy job for these locomotives, although being mostly assigned to mail, fast freight, and excursion trains they in reality rarely exceed 100.

This was on a guided tour of Berea Tower, one of Conrail's last signal towers, during its last days of operation. We saw a tremendous density of traffic by American standards, but of course that was understandable given the rail hub that the Cleveland area is. That is, indeed, why Berea survived for so long. This Conrail freight approaching us is obviously being pulled by EMD SD50s or SD60s, but the scan is unfortunately too blurry to see the numbers and confirm exactly.

This train, as incredible as it may seem, appears to be a reefer express, with a lashup of old 2nd Generation diesels to match (if you count SD50s and SD60s 2nd Generation, it's not very easy to identify all the power in this photo). In actuality, there isn't any evidence that this train was a genuine reefer express, as most of it is out of the picture.

You may remember this photo from my personal website, where I have had, at various times, a black and white scan of this. I recently did a color rescan, but the original print had been badly done, and naturally it was 13 years old when I scanned it. Therefore, I ran the photo through Adobe Photoshop LE to remove the excessive green cast, brighten it, and vastly increase the contrast, and now it looks alright, I think. It's more or less, finally, what I wanted it to be when I originally shot it.

It's obvious from the Fall colors that I shot this in the Fall of 1995, this being part of a larger National Railway Historical Society bus trip to various heritage rail sites in Southern New York and Central Pennsylvania. It is indeed ironic that the NRHS has to travel by bus most of the time, but that's life in a country with a substandard rail system. In the case of the Stourbridge Line, though, that's part of the appeal, of course, as they have this old and super-rare EMD BL2 diesel on their roster, which was the centerpoint of the trip. We rode it all the way over the line from Stourbridge to Lackawaxen (if memory serves), and this was at, I think the Stourbridge stop, or some other place. I do remember that this is where we got on, I'm pretty sure. Any info on this would be welcome, as this trip was 12 years ago, and I don't have my notes nearby. I hope you like the photo, anyway. :-)

This shot looks difficult to get, but in actuality all I had to do to get it legally was point the lens through the chainlink fence. This is certainly a period shot at this point, though, as most railroads, especially Union Pacific, the current owners of this works, use diesels with safety cabs now. When I took this, though, this was a Southern Pacific facility, and if you look carefully to the left, you can see an EMD SD45 painted in the Kodachrome color scheme that was planned for the aborted Souther Pacific/Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe merger. These locomotives were a common sight in the 1980s and early 1990s, but now they're of course very, very rare, if there are any left at all. There are obviously some other locos in the photo too, but its the SD45 that really stands out to me.

I took this shot during the aftermath and cleanup of a major wreck in Utica, NY involving a loaded stack train headed by G.E. Dash 8s. The Dash 8s are gone by this point, with the smashed well cars and containers bulldozed to the side, and one track has been reopened, letting these GP40-2s through, rare even by 1993 standards. The wreck, according to the news reports, was deliberately caused by a group of teenagers, who were subsequently arrested for the crime, but the results of the case were kept secret because of their ages. One person, perhaps not the smartest person in the world, blamed it on the railroad, saying something along the lines of "I don't know why they put the railroad so close to the housing development." The housing development where the teenagers came from dated to the 1960s, the railroad to the 1830s.

Mixed power was still a bit rare on the Water Level Route in 2000, but getting more common all the time with the Conrail sale and the subsequent explosion in traffic. This consist, though, was still something special, as it had a G.E. Dash 7 still in Family Lines colors!! I caught this in Little Falls, NY while out train chasing.

I took a lot of photos of Amtrak trains coming in and out of Plattsburgh when I studied there. This is one of my favorites, of an F40PH with some kind of wreck damage on the nose.

This is one of my only, and perhaps my only, good shot of an F40PH taken from above. This was a southbound, which could only be train 68, the "Adirondack" for New York Penn. It's slowing for Plattsburgh station, which is in the distance, around the curve and on the right side of the tracks.

Here's...another F40PH!! :-) This one is departing Plattsburgh, southbound with Train 68.