EMD FP Forties

The F40PH and I basically grew up together. I left the hospital in Huntsville, Alabama, in the summer of 1974. The F40 was conceived less than a year later, and the first one rolled out of the delivery room at LaGrange in early 1976. Later, as I began joining my dad trackside for photos, the Forties were already in their ascendancy on the Amtrak roster. It is now universally acknowledged that they were the face of the Railroad in the 1980s, and that was true for me, too. As far as I knew, Amtrak simply equalled the F40PH, especially in the second scheme with the wide white stripe down the middle. We'd see them in New Orleans at Union Passenger Terminal, both on the platform with trains and at the engine terminal awaiting turnaround. We'd catch them in Hammond on the City and in Slidell on the Crescent. Once we even chased one, below Meridian; chased it southbound in the rain until finally #20 reached track speed and the Old Man's Chrysler could no longer keep pace without breaking Mississippi law. And of course the Forties granted me portage from Hammond to Jackson and return, handling many trips I made solo as a young teen going to spend weeks with my grandmother.

As angular and utilitarian as many a locomotive, a long way from the curves of the Fs and Es their owner inherited from the railroads, I'm not sure why the Forties held such sway over all of us in those Reagan years. (He was no help, of course). But they did. Boxy, yes. But they looked like what they were built to do. All business in aluminum gray, with that belt of American color tied around their waists. The bright white strobes: I had never seen anything like that. The forward-facing five-chime horns, they made an impact. The trapezoidal windows, almost futuristic. And the way they rolled up on a platform, like at Slidell, fast and certain; only to depart without any hesitation when the call came to go. The answer to Amtrak's endless motive power problems, the Forties seemed to say at each stop: We've got this.

I still remember the first time I noticed how, while stopped, the second unit in the lashup stayed noticeably wound up and working hard. That didn't seem right to me. I asked Dad about it. He didn't know. Later I think an ICG engineer we knew explained to me that one prime mover in the series always stayed revved up so as to make hotel power for the train. I thought that was cool. The Forties seemed like preppy athletes brought in to fix a losing season; cool kids in new uniforms, hauling around tired old heritage cars with a dozen different aluminum sidings and worn out vinyl seats. I loved them. And still do. I like finding one here and there at museums or on tourist haulers. Not a bad retirement gig for motors made to top out beyond 100 mph. Yet I wince when I find one whose front end has been chopped down to add that required platform for freight service. Such a bad nose job on an otherwise handsome face. I guess it beats the scrapper's torch.

Looking over the F40PH specs again, it occurred to me that General Motors' 3000 horsepower 645 prime mover basically carried American railroading through the first 20 years of my life. The quick GP40s got all the hotshot piggybacks and early intermodals moving down the line with a clip. (A shortline man who has some today quietly admitted to me that they were born to run, not to switch.) And what would railroads needing down-and-dirty dragging have done without the SD40 series? It seemed to me in my adolescence that a trio of SD40-2s could move the world, if only the couplers would hold. Put those three in Southern's high hood tuxedo scheme? Marvelous. Which brings us back to Amtrak's remarkably successful F40PH — basically another turbo 645, but wrapped in a cowl. They sketched it up to move commuters and short-hauls, but soon the locomotive saved American passenger railroading. They could move anything, anywhere. And they even looked better together, especially in what my father always called "elephant style." I would have liked to have seen a trio of them blasting out of Moffat Tunnel with the eastbound CZ.

It is an open secret in this hobby that the equipment we most love tends to be the equipment we met in our childhoods. This is why my Old Man was always in search of steam. I get it. But if I close my eyes, I'm trackside at the old Illinois Central station in Hammond, waiting on Number 58 to take me northbound. Soon I hear the horn; see the strobes; feel the rumble as the power rolls by me to a quick stop. Of course I want to run forward and see the locomotives, maybe wave to the engineer; but the City is in front of me and I am supposed to get on and go see Grandma. Two blasts, and we were off. Louisiana rolled by, then Mississippi. So it is: 645 will always be the magic number.