.......... or is it eight by now?

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews ... o-anaheim/



A commenter suggests the original proposal was for all five to be donated to Southern California RR Museum (formerly Orange Empire at Perris), to be parceled out by them to other interested preservationists.
Seeing as nothing has been heard about the Amtrak F40PH sent to CSRM Sacramento in ages, this may end up as "the California one"................

Anyone still looking for any F40PHs for commercial use? A few of the locos on for-profit commercial tourism operations, such as the EMD F's and FP's here and there, are getting long in the tooth.......

Valid question raised by an associate seriously looking at these:
Does anyone know if they gutted or destroyed the engines in these things as part of pollution credits or not?

Amtrak 291 was alive and well on a 2018 tour of Sacramento Locomotive works.

Just a side note - all the technical reference materials used to develop the original MK Rail teaching programs on these NCTD locomotives for operating and maintenance personnel will eventually be received and catalogued at the Barriger Library in St. Louis. But those reference documents reflect the original control systems, which were subsequently replaced.

Due to my having acquired training program reference notes and archives of instructors who developed programs for the original EMD Amtrak, MBTA, and Chicago RTA (Metra) F40PH locomotives, those references will also eventually be placed with Barriger Library.

Barriger Library was selected for these F40PH related archive placements due to the enthusiastic support of their Curator, Nick Fry, their excellent facilities and central location, and their having made the process easy without requiring me to jump through hoops, over hurdles, meet with committees, or submit essays about the significance of the materials.

PC

281 has been restored to operation and seems to be a regular on their passenger runs, there's lots of footage of it on youtube from the past couple years, including this clip from 10 days ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=373gQQ1zK0k

Where's the F40PH preservation society??

I suspect the party that has shown up here attempting to start such a society was/is only interested in preserving an MBTA F40PH.....................

As noted, I have an already extant party investigating the potential of acquiring one or more of these, from NCTD or the So. Cal. RR Museum as needed............. depending on how close to "operational" these five are...........

Nope it is just that the MBTA units are available and being located our origination is in Massachusetts makes sense. We would love to have an Amtrak unit but those are hard to come by. Also being knock off aftermarket units they're not as significant.

Didn’t NCTD Put holes in the blocks (essentially disabling them) of these F40s since they used clean air money to replace them With chargers?

I know ACE (Altamomt Commuter Express) Did on a couple in order to comply with the grant they got.

I know this is not exactly relevant to rescuing the F40PH's but I found it amusing the location of the salvage yard. Only about 5 miles from my home ( one of the families old ranch houses ) and the site the yard is on, once back belonged to my Uncle George back to 1922 to the early 1960's. When I was in college the area was still orange groves. Now look at google satellite.

Went past the place yesterday. They deal in a lot of industrial grade rail and hardware. They can also co-ordinate shipping loco's and rail cars across USA Then off load to lowboy flatbed to deliver to site should I need it. An answer to some of my problems.

Dan

The last time I did projects for this operator, these locomotives were all in very good structural condition. In addition, the age-outdated original MK-LOC control systems were replaced with new microprocessor systems relatively recently. A friend familiar with the units commented that they could have run for many more years, but the funding was available to replace them now.

The financing used would normally dictate that the engines had to be disabled so that they could not be economically returned to service. However with the current national economic situation and many salvaged EMD 645 engines being available that could meet applicable emissions standards for operation outside California, the "economics" of installing replacement engines might have a rather different "bottom line" for locomotives that are otherwise in excellent condition. I do not, however, know how the State of California might react if anyone were to subsequently attempt a return to service in another state.

As far as clones are concerned, an EMD manager I knew, made the decision that took EMD out of the passenger locomotive market for many years. The MK Rail units are a story on their own. Maybe someone will do an article about it someday.

PC

Another update, some comments from SCRM and another post on PSRM's page some time ago are in agreement with this story being accurate.

https://www.facebook.com/CoasterFan2105/

Nice to see these have the possibility of being preserved, particularly since a few of the people who worked on the locomotive construction project are still around to see it happen.

PC

Have they been listed, and interviewed by knowledgeable people who know to ask the right sorts of questions to get them to 'open up'??? Are there any 'rounds' in the fight for a F40PH Knowledge Preservation Opportunity?

I was an idiot and didn't go to talk to Vernon Smith before he died. It has taken me decades to reconstruct a small, defective part of what he could recount in his sleep... and that no one ever thought to get from him.

A telephone list and management charts of the builders organization in the 1990s has been preserved. Some of the people have passed, some are still around, a few of the survivors now have serious health problems. One enormous loss was when "D.N." passed away last year, he had a tremendous technical library and was very active in industry organizations.

There is still some communication between some of the people who worked on the project. It helps when you can call one or two people and they know how several others are doing.

So someday there might be the opportunity for a history and technical article. Perhaps R&LHS Railroad History might publish it, as they have done very well with EMD locomotive development topics.

PC

Dave Goding has been active on the Trains Magazine forums, and might be a good 'entry point' into some of this.