America’s Largest Train Museum Just Saved One Of The Coolest Vintage Passenger Locomotives

Most locomotives serve out long careers dutifully carrying cargo or passengers, then they’re sent to the great scrapyard in the sky without much fanfare. Many important trains throughout history have been lost, existing as little more than a few photos and memories. The Illinois Railway Museum, America’s largest train museum, is among the organizations preserving history for everyone to enjoy for generations to come and the museum’s latest catch is a real gem. This is Metra EMD F40C No. 614. Once a mighty staple of commuter rail in Chicagoland, the poor locomotive has spent more than a decade wasting away and getting robbed for parts. Now it’s getting a second chance so that you can ride it again one day.

Back in the mid-1970s, the famous Milwaukee Road introduced 15 General Motors Electro-Motive Division (EMD) F40C locomotives on two commuter rail lines in Chicago. The six-axle F40C was quite the oddball even by today’s standards. Most transit operations run locomotives featuring a quartet of axles. This configuration has been found to have several advantages including maneuverability, lower weight, and lower costs. The EMD F40, a star of passenger rail travel in America for decades, can handle both the tighter curves of an urban environment well while still having long enough legs to run a train at speed between two major cities.

The Milwaukee Road’s EMD F40Cs were an oddity as they were among just a handful of gigantic locomotives rolling around America with a sextet of axles and stupid levels of hauling power for commuter rail. Sadly, nothing lasts forever, and most of the F40Cs were eventually scrapped, leaving just two units to rot away and get cannibalized for parts. Thanks to the Illinois Railway Museum, one of these locomotives is going to get the chance to put smiles on faces for years to come.

A Transition In Passenger Rail

In several decades past, passenger rail was different compared to how it is today. If you board a train in a city today, you’ll likely find it operated by some sort of regional transportation authority. Meanwhile, a long-distance train will usually be operated by the likes of Amtrak.

A long time ago, passenger trains running down the rails in America were handled by countless private railroads. To call the competition between these railroads “fierce” would be an understatement. Chicago, which has frequently been called the capital of rail in America, saw countless railroads operating on the thousands of miles of tracks in the area. Commuter rail to Chicago was operated in large part by Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, Chicago and North Western, and Milwaukee Road.

But these weren’t all of the roads that served Chicago at some point in history. That ridiculously long list includes Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Sault Ste. Marie, Louisville and Nashville, Penn Central Transportation, Monon Railroad, Illinois Central, Baltimore and Ohio, and too many others to list.

In the past, rail historians have noted, more railroads converged in Chicago than anywhere else in America and the thousands of miles of trackage in the Chicago area were just staggering. Chicago was an ideal location for so many railroads to flow through. The area features flat, arable land perfect for farming and laying down track. It also features access to the Great Lakes, access to all sorts of industries, and it’s pretty much right in the middle of the country. Even today, six of the seven largest railroads run through Chicago, as do 1,300 trains daily.

After May 1971, Amtrak took over a lot of America’s passenger rail operations, allowing the surviving private railroads to focus on lucrative freight operations. Longer distance operations were gobbled up by Amtrak while local commuter rail eventually fell into the hands of Metra, the current operator of commuter rail from the suburbs to Chicago.

In the mid-1970s, the predecessors of Metra still ruled Chicago’s commuter rail. For its part, the Milwaukee Road served Chicago via the Milwaukee North, which ran from Chicago to Fox Lake in the far northern suburbs and as far beyond as Walworth, Wisconsin. Milwaukee Road also ran the Milwaukee West line, which took passengers out west to Elgin.

The passenger lines in Chicago had their own ways of driving progress in passenger rail. In the 1950s, Chicago & North Western introduced its iconic heated and air-conditioned bi-level coaches. Milwaukee Road responded with a similar setup in 1960, boasting improvements in comfort, capacity, and speed.

In 1973, Amtrak began taking delivery of a new type of locomotive to replace the aging and broken fleet it inherited from private railroads when it opened a couple of years prior. The EMD SDP40F was the first new diesel-electric built specifically for Amtrak and the railroad intended the meaty six-axle beast to be used on its long-distance routes. Based on the EMD FP45 passenger locomotive and the EMD SD40-2 freight locomotive, the SDP40F promised durability and more than enough power to pull long passenger trains at high speeds. These bulky locomotives were powered by EMD 16-645E3 169.6-liter V16 prime movers good for 3,000 HP.

As Trains.com writes, the private railroad predecessors to Metra didn’t like asking for government funding to upgrade equipment. Instead, each railroad is expected to fund the acquisition of new locomotives and improved carriages through fare hikes. Unfortunately, this practice was unsustainable.

In an effort to get government assistance to improve rail, four Chicago area districts were formed. The North Suburban Mass Transit District and the Northwest Suburban Mass Transit District worked to improve the service offered by Milwaukee Road. By joining these two districts, Milwaukee Road gained access to federal and state funds that it used to upgrade the railroad’s decades-old locomotives and passenger cars.

The Mighty F40C

This allowed Milwaukee Road to make one important improvement, from Metra:

The F40Cs were derived from the SDP40F six-axle locomotives built in 1973 and 1974 and purchased by Amtrak. Though the two locomotives are relatively similar, a key difference between the SDP40F and the F40C was the way in which the locomotives heated their railcars. The SDP40F operated with a steam generator for climate control which, approaching the last quarter of the century, had become outdated. Increased interest in a new way to heat passenger cars resulted in the development of head end power (HEP), and the new version of the six-axle locomotive adopted the trend.

The colossal F40Cs featured alternators for head-end power, which finally left the old steam generators in the past. The F40Cs kept the same power as the SDP40Fs, but were smaller and Milwaukee Road gave the units some extra flair with the addition of distinctive corrugated panels. Add in a swooping white and red on sky blue design and the F40Cs were just as pretty as they were powerful.

The F40C even proved to be the better version of the SDP40F. Eventually, the SDP40Fs gained notoriety for derailing, which is credited with hurting the type’s performance on the market. The F40Cs didn’t suffer the same fate.

As Metra explained above, the F40Cs were also ahead in technology, but not for very long. While the F40Cs were reliable and powerful, they were also just so awfully huge, from Metra:

The F40C locomotive is heavier and much longer than its successor, the F40PH. At 364,000 pounds and more than 68-feet long, the F40C is much larger than the F40PH’s 260,000 pounds, 56-foot-long build. The significant size and weight of the F40Cs along with the two additional traction motors necessary for the six-axle design resulted in a lack of demand for commuter rail needs, particularly for short-distance rail. EMD’s construction of the F40PH put all the same technology of its predecessor into a smaller locomotive, and customer demand followed suit.

The smaller F40PH remains a common sight on Metra’s lines today. However, that doesn’t mean that the F40Cs were immediately replaced. The Milwaukee Road eventually collapsed, the mass transit districts dissolved, and commuter rail to Chicago ended up in the hands of the then newly formed Metra. The railroad then kept the F40Cs running until 2003 and 2004 when they were replaced by new MPI MP36PH-3S locomotives.

The F40Cs then sat unused on Metra’s roster for five years. When it came time for Metra to rebuild its oldest EMD F40PHs, F40C no. 611 and no. 614 were put back into action, picking up the slack. I fell in love with the F40Cs around this time and got to ride behind no. 611 as it pulled a train from Fox Lake to Chicago. I still remember how its horn sounded and how its power hit with a kick.

Unfortunately, as Metra says, the F40Cs were thoroughly vintage locomotives by this point and they were having reliability issues of their own. Every F40C was retired by 2012 as Metra said the locomotives were in dire need of refurbishment. Metra put out bids and got no bites, so the locomotives just ended up sitting. Even worse was that Metra’s shops began raiding them for parts to run other locomotives.

Metra then started getting rid of the F40C fleet. By the late 2010s just two were left, nos. 611 and 614, the last ones to get use. Sadly, that didn’t mean they were operable. They needed total rebuilds back in 2012, by now they had so many parts taken that they couldn’t even start.

For years, enthusiasts including yours truly begged Metra to donate the locomotives instead of scrapping them. Thankfully, Metra finally did just that. On February 21, IRM announced great news:

The Illinois Railway Museum would like to express its gratitude to Metra for the donation of F40C locomotive 614, which is expected to arrive at the IRM site in Union soon. This unique and distinctive six-axle passenger diesel served for decades in Chicago commuter service, operating over the Milwaukee Road lines of what today is the Metra commuter rail system. It is the only one of its kind in preservation. IRM hopes to restore the engine and operate it for the public over the museum’s demonstration railroad.

Metra 614 was built in May 1974 as Milwaukee Road 54. The F40C design was unique to the North Suburban and North West Suburban Mass Transit Districts, which supported commuter service over the Milwaukee Road lines north and west of Chicago to Fox Lake and Elgin. The F40C is a six-axle, six-motor locomotive with a “cowl” design intended purely for passenger service. The locomotives sides were sheathed largely in stainless steel to match the Milwaukee Road’s bi-level commuter coaches. They were also equipped with head-end power (HEP) as built. Only 15 F40C locomotives were built, all in 1974 by the Electro-Motive Division of General Motors at the EMD plant in McCook, Illinois.

Weirdly, Metra also hasn’t given up the six-axle dream. In recent years, it has picked up a fleet of majestic EMD SD70MACHs (above) that now fulfill the roles the F40Cs used to.

The Future

No. 614 was delivered to the museum on Sunday. Sadly, Metra’s crews robbed 614 of its turbo, aftercoolers, ducts, radiators, diode banks, and other important parts. Due to the large number of missing parts, the IRM Diesel Shop has a battle ahead of itself to get 614 running again. However, the volunteers of IRM have repeatedly shown themselves to practically have a superpower for bringing locomotives back from the dead.

This is a pretty huge deal. If it weren’t for Metra and the Illinois Railway Museum, it’s entirely possible that these locomotives could have disappeared into the pages of history like so many others. So even if just one is being saved, it’s incredible.

I’d say give the volunteers a year or two. Then, you’ll get to see the mighty F40C running the rails again and even ride in a train pulled by it. You bet I’ll be there when it happens.

(Topshot: H. Michael Miley – Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0.)