Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: diesel locomotive

I took this one in 1993 (Note that the copyright date on the photo is wrong. I fixed it on my own website but on Flickr it's too much trouble.), waiting in Utica, New York for Amtrak's (actually Swedish Railways') X2000 tilt train to visit. It was hours late, and didn't arrive until after dark, so all of my best shots were taken during the day waiting for it, while I still had light. This locomotive, an EMD SD40-2 diesel, was leading a lashup of other locomotives pulling a garbage train. In those days, New York State had so much garbage that it was being shipped west by rail! I mainly like the impression of speed that this photo gives, with the blurred handrails and headlight, even if the train was only going about 50 m.p.h.!!!

This was taken at the 1998 National Railway Historical Society (NRHS) National Convention, although not in Syracuse, where the convention was based. Rather, I took this in Thendara, NY, at that time the northern end of the Adirondack Scenic Railroad, after having worked (as a Trainman) on the first public passenger train (at least to NRHS members from around the country) to run from Utica to Thendara since 1981. The locomotive (this one, as well as ex-NYC #8223) had been run around, and I took this picture of the cab before reboarding for the trip back to Utica.

I took this picture solely to be a locomotive picture. I'm not convinced that it has any other merits, but railfans on Flickr will probably appreciate it if they're not from the Czech Republic. To the best of my knowledge, these Class 749 diesels don't venture out of the country, as all of the Eurocity and other international services are electric. That means that the only way to see them is to come to the Czech Republic! Class 749s were originally built as 750 and 751 Class diesels in 1964-1976 by Ceskomoravska Kolben-Danek (CKD), and then were rebuilt (again by CKD) into Class 749s in 1992-1996. They put out 1478 horsepower, and can reach a maximum operating speed of 100Km/h, although they rarely achieve this because they are usually used on slow branchline passenger services and freights.

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 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.

I took this on the same day as the 6399 shot, scanned it in 1994, and uploaded it on Oct. 26, 2006, without a rescan!!! That's when I discovered the date on the 6399 shot was wrong. I've corrected it at least on the caption, although the photo remains wrong. In any case, I didn't used to like this photo so much, but looking at the other stuff on Flickr, this one holds up surprisingly well. It's not only, I think, a decent black and white scan, but a very old one. It's only a year newer than the original negative and print!!! I had an Omniscan black and white scanner then, and I haven't gotten around to rescanning this shot. It was originally color, shot with Kodacolor Gold 400, I think, but it's now, for obvious reasons, black and white, and it might be a better shot because of it. It was my first truly successful pan shot, so it's significant to me for that reason, too.

During the 1960s and 1970s, when diesel hood units with conventional cabs and sometimes high noses dominated American railroading, Western Europe shunned them. Very few Western European railways used any diesels on the grand scale that American railroads did, with the exception, possibly, of Ireland and Britain, but Eastern Europe was another story. There, the scene could look quite American, especially since much of the Warsaw Pact network was neglected by the various Communist governments. In any case, most of the equipment of the Communist era was inherited by the post-Communist governments and railways, and much of it was sold to private owners. This included many of Ceskoslovenske Drahy's Class 740 hood units, built 1973-1989 by CKD, which largely went to maintenance contractors and heavy industries seeking to switch their own sidings. One of the maintenance (or possibly renewal-only) contractors is the vaguely named Doprava, which is Czech for transport. Given that these ones were working a ballast train, their 70Km/h top speed and 1183 horsepower output apiece probably didn't keep them from performing their duties. Given what they were doing, namely working on an upgrade to the Prague-Vienna mainline (Linka 221 and 220 by Ceske Drahy's line ID system) for 160Km/h operation, it's understandable why Ceske Drahy wanted to get rid of them, though.

I'm roughly certain that this was taken in 1997, although it could have been late 1996. One way or the other, this locomotive doesn't show up on many CP rosters, and the reason is that it is a former D&H locomotive, which means that it got bounced around quite a lot. It wasn't even originally D&H, as the D&H bought it from Lehigh Valley in 1976 (according to what I could find online. It looks, also, very old, but actually it's not an original GP38, but a GP38-2, albeit one from 1972.