"Baby Tunnel Motors"

The misnomer of "baby tunnel motor" has been applied to the GP-15 locomotive over the years. They were introduced in 1976 by General Motors/EMD to compete with the massive rebuild programs going on at that time to upgrade road switchers economically. They happen to have the same type of rear radiator section as the much larger "tunnel motors" - intakes down by the walkway rather than up by the roof as seen above where the two units are back to back - so they get mis-named this way. The larger ones were designed to stay cooler under a heavy load in tunnels - cool air is lower - so they were less likely to overheat and quit. A recent Trains article reinforced that point. These little guys probably avoid rugged mainline tunnels but they work hard on locals and switching.

The top photo is of a Missouri Pacific GP-15 leading a westbound local through Lindsborg, KS in 1982, about 5 years after delivery. It is crossing the UP's Salina to McPherson branch. The intersection was right on the campus of Bethany College that some of us attended. The unit in the photo is the second in a large order of 160 placed by MoPac who bought more than everyone else combined. It was common to see these on locals mixed with another geep, usually a GP-38. For some reason this particular unit is one that doesn't show a UP number. Maybe I jinxed it with my photo. This MoPac line had runthrough trains from the D&RGW out of Pueblo, CO so occasionally the real SD40t-2 tunnel motors came by as well.

This photo is of a UP GP-15 taken from the railfan park in Rochelle, IL June 2007. Believe it or not Skull just happened to call a few minutes before this shot - looking for Wheelman back in New England somewhere I guess. The old C&NW ordered 25 of these rigs so that may be the orgins of this one, though later MoPac units had the longer nose. The UP gobbled up MoPac and C&NW so they inherited what was left of 185 units. At this point I had heard that the UP was going to phase out the GP-15's so I grabbed all the shots I could. The UP across the prairies in recent years seemed to follow the same practices as the old MoPac and match these guys up with a GP-38 for locals.

Bringing us back to Maine, we find that the St. Lawrence and Atlantic has been leasing some GP-15's. These came from three that Safe Handling brought in to use on the the old Maine Coast RR when operations changed hands. This was a temporary arrangement while the line was upgraded for passenger service. The Maine Eastern RR, subsidiary of the Morristown and Erie RR, took over on a more permanent basis so the GP-15's migrated over to the nearby SLR. The left photo is from February 2007 at the Danville Jct. diamond for Pan Am. The photo on the right is from April 2008 at Lewiston Jct. Maybe the fact that Safe Handling is a large customer in Auburn has something to do with their arrival. They are still in Conrail blue. Conrail was one of the 4 customer for these units. They inherited a motley assortment of old units from the 6 bankrupt roads, so they were in need of modernization and ordered 100. All I need now is a sample of the 25 Frisco units and I'll have a complete set! Somewhere in the print and slide files I may just have one too.

BC