Railway Age reports Reading Company SW 1200 2719 (EMD 1963; RDG Class SWE-14) has been donated to Reading Company Technical and Historical Society by Omnitrax, where it was Stockton Terminal and Eastern 678.

STE, BNSF and NS are moving the engine to the RCT&HS museum in Hamburg PA.

Here's the Railway Age article:

https://www.railwayage.com/freight/shor ... ocomotive/

In the photo please note the RDG rain gutter on the cab roof.

Phil Mulligan

Did it come from EMD with roller-bearing axles or was it upgraded somewhere along the way?

Spotted it last week in somewhere near Williams Arizona tucked up behind three BNSF units. She was riding along at about 60 per. Wondered where she was going.

MS

On the Anthracite Railroads Historical Society closed facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/1080093 ... 558224426/ in response to the question "Is it operational?" a person from RCT&HS responded:

"It was, but now is not. As a provision required by the EPA to approve the donation, the Society had to agree to not operate it. The locomotive would have had to be scrapped otherwise....STE acquired a new environmentally friendly Tier 4 compliant locomotive to replace the STE 678 through a special grant. The grant requires the replaced locomotive to be destroyed or in this case special permission was obtained to donate the locomotive with the conditions it be rendered inoperable and remain that way to prevent it from spewing all those nasty carbon emissions."

Asked "Something that can be fixed?" the response was "It could. But since the donation criteria set forth by the EPA required an agreement to never operate it, it's kind of moot point currently. "

As part of the EPA/DERA grants, you have to provide a certificate of destruction (and proof) for the diesel equipment you replaced with a funded Tier 4 or zero emissions compliant piece of equipment. What surprises me is that the EPA would allow it to escape unscathed since they’re firm about it. That had to be a helluva long row to hoe out in the bureaucratic back 40.

Well, you could "fix" the unit by installing a replacement diesel, though that isn't practical for someone other than say IRM, who put a replacement 20-645 in their FP45. There was some discussion on here about this EPA destruction program not applying to preservation groups, but I am sure that the EPA is trying to avoid carriers gaming the system by calling themselves a museum and then the unit is out switching cars in the SF area.

First, as a 1963 build it came with roller bearings.

As to EPA and California, the Railway Age article credits Omnitrax with getting the waivers.

Phil Mulligan

As curiosity killed the cat, I dug around in the DERA grant stuff a while back and found nothing about exemptions from destruction for historical preservation. Could have missed it, though. Maybe they'll entertain it on a case by case basis but enforcement would be a problem that I'd guess they don't want to get into.

Putting a Tier 4 compliant 4-stroke in a SW1200? Well, that just ain't right.

I assumed that one could put a replacement/relay 645 in the unit and not violate the letter of the law (though certainly the spirit), i.e. the destruction is to the specific prime mover in the unit, not the whole unit, but I may be wrong.

You can apply for a grant to upgrade the engine for lower emissions or replace it but the old block, if the engine was replaced, has to be destroyed. In this case, replacing the entire vehicle means the vehicle would have to be "destroyed".

From the 2020 Sample Scrapage Statement:

That seems really clear, doesn't it?

Here is the post I recalled, from psa188: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=44128&p=299227&hilit=destroy#p299227

"The issue of making a locomotive inoperable due to an air quality grant came up before:

"Exploratory conversations with the railroad’s management determined that their funding grant through California’s Carl Moyer Memorial Air Quality Standards Attainment Program, which enabled M & ET to purchase the cleanerburning genset units, was requiring them to destroy the engine blocks of the 70-tonners! This would have not only destroyed their historical integrity but rendered them inoperable and basically parts units or scrap. PSRMA did some investigating on their own and determined that the local air-quality agency had erred on the block-destruction interpretation and it wasn’t necessary. "

see https://www.psrm.org/trains/diesel/sp-5119/"

We need some clarity here, as was noted in a reply to psa188's post.

California has multiple air quality management districts that, IIRC, are pretty much independent of each other so they can each have their own rules. Those rules I'm not familiar with. Any project that has Federal DERA money in it will be subject to the destruction requirements so I can see how that can bleed over into others' rules, DERA money or no. In California, you'd have to check with the local AQMD.

ST&E is located in Stockton CA, I wonder if a similar situation to the M&ET GEs applies.

Maybe.... They're in different AQMDs. Here's a map: https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/capcoa/dismap.htm

Given that the RCT&HS.Museum in question already has, as I recall, an EMD NW2, FP7, GP7, GP30, and GP35; an Alco RS3, C630 and C424; a GE U30C, a Baldwin DS4-4-1000, a pair of RDCs, and even a small Plymouth switcher.............. only half, at absolute best, are actually "operable" depending on how you want to define it.....

........... in WHAT bloody conceivable universe is it going to be deemed "necessary" to make this confounded SW1200 operable by whatever alternative means?!?!?!?