Feather River GP40s

Before the U30B General Electric tried enticing WP with the U25B, bringing their ground-breaking demo set to the railroad in the early Sixties. WP passed, not wanting to experiment with a "new" locomotive manufacturer, instead ordered GP35s from EMD. (Shade Tree Collection)

Alco's Century Line was more popular with Eastern roads than in the West, however, Alco did send one of their C-636 bruiser's to WP for a demo. WP passed on the model, fearing the builder would not be around much longer. Above, D&H C-420 415 marches under Starrucca Viaduct in October of 1985. (Ken Rattenne Photo)

Initially, WP was quite interested in high horsepower six-axle power, and decided to road-test EMD's SD45 to see what all the fuss was about.

In February of 1967, EMD sent an SD45 demonstrator test set to Stockton, where the company operated the units on several road freights. Especially impressed with the SD45's pulling capacity on High Line trains (Keddie-Bieber), WP management at first looked quite favorably on the flair-radiatored giants. The 20-cylindered engines were ready and willing to pull copious amounts of tonnage over WP's toughest grades, but there was one significant drawback: They cost too much! Not only were they beyond WP's locomotive budget, but the ongoing cost of unit maintenance and additional upkeep of physical plant convinced the railroad to pass on the units and order General Electric's U30B model instead. Besides, GE would sell WP five U30Bs for the cost of four SD45s!

EMD was not the only manufacturer to court WP with high-horsepower demonstrators. In February of 1969, Alco sent three C636 demonstrators to Stockton for evaluation. The angle-nose counterpart of the SD45 had just completed a disastrous stint on the SP when delivered on a dreary February 2nd. Mechanical department test results showed no surprises, concluding that six axle diesels put additional stress on curved rail found prominent in the company's serpentine Feather River Canyon. Once again the railroad said "thanks but no thanks". It was not much later that Alco announced its departure from the locomotive business.

In January of 1967, salesman from General Electric called on the railroad and convinced WP to sample their 3000 horsepower B-B competitor.

Delivery of five U30Bs was accepted in September of that year wearing the numbers 751-755. Another 15 units were shipped in 1968 and 1969 and a final two were purchased in a bargain-basement deal from GE in 1970. These two units had been experimental prototypes used by GE for locomotive development and were last configured as U36Bs. For $50,000 off the advertised price of a new locomotive, GE rebuilt the pair as U30Bs.

By 1969 WP had solid data on the performance of the two manufacturers' models and it declared EMD the winner.

It was apparent that the big U-Boats were excellent pullers but had serious flaws in their engine design. The Boats tended to spew oil and suffer general engine failures on a regular basis. By contrast, the GP40s labored on without much complaint, pulling trains through the Feather River Canyon and across the alkali sinks and basins of Nevada and Utah in lashups of four or more units.

In 1972 WP sampled GE's lower horsepower U23B by purchasing but discovered that the 12-cylinder FDL engine offered little improvement over its 16-cylinder big brother. Thus it was left to the stalwart GP40 to keep the railroad fluid, mating in lashups with everything from UP's SD40-2 to BN's Alco C-636 smokers.