On display at the Hamlet Station is Seaboard Air Line SDP35 1114, one of only 35 of these locomotives built. The EMD SDP35 is a 6-axle diesel-electric locomotive built by General Motors Electro-Motive Division between July 1964 and September 1965. Essentially this locomotive was an EMD 2500-hp SD35 equipped with a steam generator, located in the extended long hood end, for passenger use.
The SAL had the largest fleet of these passenger hood diesels (they owned 20), followed by 10 for the Union Pacific, 4 for the Louisville & Nashville and a single unit for the Atlantic Coast Line.
Seaboard Air Line SDP35 1114, on display with SAL caboose 5241, was built by EMD in November 1964, and with the Seaboard Air Line/Atlantic Coast Line merger on July 1, 1967, would soon become Seaboard Coast Line 1965. The SCL would later renumber it 615, but with the next merger of SCL with Louisville & Nashville, Clinchfield, Georgia Railroad, Atlanta & West Point and Western Railway of Alabama), it would have a new identity as Seaboard System 4595. And, before anyone got too used to that railroad, SBD merged with the Chessie System roads (Baltimore & Ohio, Chesapeake & Ohio and Western Maryland) to form CSX Transportation, for whom this SDP35 became CSXT 4595. Upon its retirement from CSX, it was repainted back to its original – and classy! – SAL colors, complete with its original road number, and placed on a display track here in Hamlet. By this date in 2015, it (and SAL caboose 5241) had been repainted to freshen the colors since I first saw it in 2008. Nice work, Hamlet!
