In this 100th Anniversary year for Electro-Motive Diesel, I am going to write and post a series of descriptions of displays and promotional devices used by EMD over the years to advertise their products and mold a public image of their organization. I previously attempted to advance this project with several museums and industry organizations, and nobody stepped forward to offer website space, so I am going to post them here as discussion items. They may not be strictly preservation topics, but they certainly qualify as railroad history. In this time of Covid scares and lockdowns they may at least provide some useful ideas for promoting your organizations to the public. Moderators please feel free to relocate them if you need to. I would have been glad to write them as articles if the ability to post them to the articles section of the website had been restored.
EMD Displays - Commercial Store Window Advertising
For many years during the 1940s and 1950s, EMD rented commercial window space at prominent businesses in La Grange, Chicago, and Cleveland to advertise their products and promote public awareness of GM involvement in the locomotive building industry. The accompanying photo of an EMD window display titled BUILDING A LOCOMOTIVE, shown in the window of the Second Federal Savings and Loan Association in Cleveland, Ohio, is generally illustrative of this kind of display. Large photos were adhesive bonded to a backing frame to illustrate steps in building a diesel-electric locomotive at the EMD Cleveland assembly plant, the former Cleveland Diesel Division Plant Three.
I don’t know whether this minimally expensive window display ever sold any locomotives for GM, but it probably made a lot of people in the local area aware of the GM division and helped generate interest in job opportunities at the plant. One thing I can tell you for certain is that presentations depicting the building of locomotives are consistently popular with the general public.
This is just one of many ways that EMD promoted their organization and its products through commercial displays, and exhibits at railroad, marine, and power generating Trade Shows, State Fairs, and occasional World’s Fairs. During 2022 I will show you some others.
PC
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