The Diesel That Did It

General Motors' FT Locomotive

Wallace W. Abbey, Kevin P. Keefe, Martha A. Miller, Kevin P. Keehe, Martha Abbey Miller

The Diesel That Did It tells the story of the legendary diesel-electric locomotive, the FT.

As war loomed in 1939, American railroads were on the precipice of railroad transformation. In an obscure factory in La Grange, Illinois, a group of gifted engineers and designers were planning a revolution that would shake railroading to its foundations and eventually put the steam locomotive out of business. Their creation, the FT, was a diesel-electric, semi-streamlined freight engine. The FT would establish a new standard for reliability, flexibility, and cost, but its arrival unsettled many railroad employees and gave fresh ammunition to their labor unions, who believed that it threatened a century-old culture.

Wallace W. Abbey's The Diesel That Did It is the story of a revolution. He explores how EMC (and its successor Electro-Motive Division of General Motors) conceived the FT, and how it ultimately emerged as the dominant locomotive power plant for 20 years. However, for Abbey, the history of the Santa Fe Railway and the FT go hand in hand. The Diesel That Did It also offers a penetrating look at how the great American railroad, at the height of its Super Chief glamor, threw its conservative mechanical traditions aside to bet big on the diesel.

Showcasing more than 140 exquisite photographs by Abbey and other noted photographers, The Diesel That Did It is a captivating story not to be missed by railroaders and railfans.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Ride with the Ghost of the Santa Fe: The Legacy of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe
• 2. Too Many Santa Fes!: Overview of the Railroad That Introduced the FT
• 3. Mechanical Motion, Set to Music: Santa Fe Steam at the Dawn of the FT
• 4. Hamilton, Winton, Kettering: The Evolution of Electro-Motive
• 5. Finally, a Locomotive Prime Mover: The Birth of the Legendary 567 Engine
• 6. The Model F Standard: In the End, Electro-Motive Had to Prove It Could Handle Freight
• 7. A Mikado on the Prairies, a Mallet in the Mountains: The 103 Goes to Work on the Santa Fe Trail
• 8. Lessons Learned from the 103: What the 103 Did, and Did Not Do, on the Santa Fe
• 9. A Big Coming-out Party: Santa Fe Rolls Out Its First Freight Diesel
• 10. Electro-Motive Goes to War: A Locomotive Builder Serves the US Navy
• 11. The Unions and the Laws: The Challenges to Operating Efficiency
• 12. Eighty Locomotives the Hard Way: Building the Fleet One EMD Order at a Time
• 13. A Class by Itself: The Author’s Retrospective
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Authors