Hey, if any of you guys have Photoshop, now's a good time to post a pic of a GG1 with solar panels mounted on top in place of the pantographs.

"Damn thing looks like Skylab..."

I think you miss the point. The main attribute of electrified railways is the stealthy silence as they whizz by. Running an infernal combustion loco, or generator car, in the consist is most certainly going to ruin that effect. At that point the only thing of note is the classic styling, so you may as well issue everyone ear plugs and just push the damned thing with a diesel. At least then you could put the noisemaker at the opposite end of the train, like they do with the fake Thomas engines. And no, you can't use the electric as a control cab car, none of the electrics in preservation were ever set up to MU with diesels; the control scheme is different.

Nothing is stopping anyone from starting a “Pennsylvania Electric Society” running wires for a few miles isnt impossible. Hey AEM-7’s are over 40 years old now!

If I won the lottery...

Money shouldn’t be a problem. Start a non-profit and a fundraising campaign.
You will need time.... time is the most precious resource...

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania would like to take over the Keystone Corridor from Philadelphia to Harrisburg. That would make SEPTA the operating agency for the line. There's a fairly intact GG1 at the Harrisburg station, so who knows?

Here you go. South Shore 803 operates at Illinois Railway Museum.

https://youtu.be/t4nBSm-414A

Exactly

Just nitpicking here, but as a point of trivia, that's not entirely true. Milwaukee Road E70, the "Little Joe" plinthed in Deer Lodge, was rebuilt c1956 with a "Wylie throttle" to allow it to run with diesels via a jury-rigged MU system, while paired boxcabs 10200A and 10200B preserved in Duluth were among a handful of boxcabs rewired in the late 1950s to MU directly with diesels.

That is a funny statement and one I have never heard of. I don't think I have ever heard anyone say they would go see a electric locomotive because it is quiet. I am also certain if a GG1, Bi Polar, or other electric locomotive was brought back to life, and was powered using a power car, it would draw the same amount of people regardless of where it was receiving the power. You don't like it. Fine stay home. Nobody likes the diesels tagging along with the steams engines either, but if that is what it takes to ride behind the main line steam engines I could care less.

The Milwaukee Road constantly had electric locomotives MU'ed with diesel locomotives and there is at least one box cab, one Little Joe, and one Bi Polar preserved. Furthermore South Shore, Little Joe, #803, is operational in Illinois and South Shore,#802, is preserved in Pennsylvania. I doubt if it would be difficult to MU any electric locomotive to a diesel. I have examined the little boxes used to control trailing diesel locomotives on board main line steam locomotives and the electronics are minimal.

Two questions regarding the Little Joe operating at IRM video.
1) Are all the motors working in the video?
2) Did someone have to hold onto the circuit breaker to keep it from tripping?

Thanks!

Food for thought -

1. With the modern microprocessor control systems diesel and straight electric can MU routinely and as examples I will cite some of New Jersey Transit's protect sets which consist of one of each and can be operated from either. NJT's short-lived New York Atlantic City Service operated with one of each on opposite ends and could be operated from either.

2. (Unfortunately I am not in a location where I can order a book out of the Princeton University Library Storage Facility and see it to today so I apologize for not being a tad foggy on some of the detail) Argentina had an electrified suburban service out of one of the stations in Buenos Aries which used electric MU equipment. In order to expand the service without either electrifying more miles of track or acquiring a separate equipment pool for non-electric service they obtained a small fleet of, I believe, English Electric diesel power generator cars which looked surprisingly like contemporaneous diesel-electric locomotives and supplied power to the MU cars with a trainline power bus in a manner similar to the Reading MUs in Philadelphia which operated pan down being fed from the first and last cars.

3. During the PRR's early tests of AC traction on the Burlington & Mount Holly (a 600v DC trolley line), the experimental locomotive towed a transformer on a flatcar to accomplish the necessary conversion.

While I do not consider a GG1 suitable for modification to operate either as a cab car or with a trailing power source due to a number of idiosyncrasies in the design, none of the proposals I've seen strike me as particularly outrageous - if one has the needed car loads of money.

GME

Sounds like you are thinking of the BAGSR "Mobile Power Houses" which are detailed on this website...

https://www.derbysulzers.com/argentinadmu1935.html

The individual passenger cars had traction motors, but weren't EMU's as such, as the lines out of Constitucion were not electrified until the 1970's using Japanese equipment.

I know at one point - even during transportation/storage of the existing GG1's, that there were supposedly environmental issues with the PCB's in the on-board transformers.

Being relatively ignorant about anything bigger than a streetcar under wire, was this real or exaggerated, and was it resolved? Were the remaining units effectively 'drained'? Because that would seem to alter any future proposal to restoration if the technical issues of the electrical system demand replacing that system.

I was given a tour of the GE plant in the 70's when the E60's were being built. I know that I was simply astounded to find out how 'packed' the carbody was, never sure with what, but there wasn't a big empty steel shell in there for sure.

There were so many odd spurs and miles of PRR overhead into some weird places - various cutoffs, terminals, etc. that you'd think there was a remaining branch or spur somewhere that used to have overhead that Amtrak would allow - without conflicting to occupied intercity passenger train moves - being reconnected to the overhead system (for a price). I remember a whole lot of wire south of Enola and GG1's pulling freight down there, and pretty much the entire south Enola yard is now empty real estate.

While I'm not personally familiar with everything around Wilmington, my drives through there have still shown a lot of odd overhead artifacts around there when I've driven down to Bear to the Amtrak shops.

One thing to remember, a GG1 is a straight 11/12 kV 25 Hz single-phase AC locomotive. It is not designed for multiple voltages or frequencies and cannot run on DC power. Control is by means of transformer taps.

You could attach a car with an inverter to convert DC to 25 Hz AC but that 25 Hz inverter and transformer would be an expensive custom order. You might as well put a push-pull throttle in the GG1 and use it as a big cab car. Remember, RRMPA won't operate its artifacts at all.

As to the noise it's interesting. Up close you can hear the blowers and on pulling away, you can hear the relays clicking, the AC motors buzzing and the gears whining. On the road? I was at Leaman Place for a 4935 trip from Washington, back when AMTK 441 ran via 30th St. Phila. and combined with 41 at Harrisburg. They were due and the first thing we heard was the train wheels clicking on the jointed rail then in place. (The Harrisburg Line is now all-welded.) 441 came first but 41 was longer and was very impressive going by at 75 mph. Both with GG1 power.

As to MU with diesels, the ACS-64's are the first motors that can do it. AEM-7's in push-pull service can receive 8-notch input but cannot send US 8-notch commands. Basically they have a translator that receives US 8-notch input, translates it to ASEA language and sends it to the motor's actual throttle. It's a bit of a kludge but it works, albeit one-way only.

I understand MILW's Joes don't actually MU with diesels from their own control circuits but had 8-notch throttles added so the engineer could operate the diesels from the electric's cab. CSS&SB's 800's do not have diesel throttles.

Phil Mulligan

My apologies for using the word "kludge" but an AEM-7 is from the correct era. RRMPA has 915 and IRM has 945.