The more things change, sometimes the more they stay the same. The scene here is the Burlington Northern Empire Builder waiting impatiently to get on its overnight run from Minneapolis to Fargo and points west. We are a year in to BN, and less than a month away from Amtrak. No SDP40s or SDP45s, the BN leads tonight the way the famed train was originally dieselized back in 1947. With a vintage former GN E7A. By this time BN, MILW and Santa Fe were reassigning modern high horsepower passenger units to freight service to keep them out of the grips of Amtrak. So tonight history repeats itself with a 34 year old E7 leading a pair of F units on Jim Hill's finest train. My understanding is that power changed at Havre, so most likely the E did not have to handle Marias or Stevens Passes.
What did passenger trains look like before Amtrak in America, and Via Rail in Canada? Find out in this album with 2,700+ Historical Photos from early passenger trains of North America from the 1900's up until the early years of Government passenger trains
Photos of North America's favorite First Generation locomotives. EMD, ALCO, Baldwin; essentially anything that represents the OG wide cab diesel locomotive
