I went over to the Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth, GA yesterday. It's a very interesting place and has several diesel-electric and steam locomotives as well as a large assortment of rolling stock. Many of the diesel-electrics are fully operational. Sadly, none of the steam locomotives are running.

The facility is located on 34 acres which used to be the home of American Railcar where freight cars were built. This worked out great because the museum has a full locomotive shop facility with several large overhead cranes and sandblasting and painting facilities for restoration.

I took a short ride in the cab of #8202 which is an EMD SW7 switcher and then wandered around the whole place taking pictures and climbing on and in everything. The engineer was a retired Fire Chief here and was kind enough to tour me through their shop and restoration facilities. Everyone who works here is a volunteer. I am amazed at all they have managed to do given the fact that nobody gets paid for their work.

If you're ever in the Atlanta area, be sure to check it out!

Here's some info on 3 of the diesel electrics pictured below:

#8202 - green/white Diesel Switcher Locomotive - Southern Railway
EMD SW7
Built in 1950 for Georgia, Southern & Florida Railroad
These were built by General Motors Electro-Motive Division between October 1949 and January 1951. It is powered by a 567A V12 engine developing 1,200 hp.

#1026 - blue/white Diesel Locomotive - Georgia Railroad
EMD GP7
Built in 1950 for Georgia Railroad
These were built by General Motors Electro-Motive Division between October, 1949 and May, 1954. It is powered by an EMD 567B 16-cylinder engine developing 1500 horsepower. They were the first EMD road locomotives to use a hood unit design instead of a car-body design. This proved to be more efficient than the cab unit design as the hood unit cost less, had cheaper and easier maintenence, and had slightly better vision. It also made the transition easier from steam to diesel-electric for the engineers because the layout and "view over the nose" is similar.

#6901 - green/white Diesel Passenger Locomotive - Southern Railway
EMD E8
Built in 1951 for Southern Railway for the Atlanta-Washington, DC Southern Crescent
These were built by General Motors Electro-Motive Division between August, 1949 and May, 1953. It is powered by two 1,125 hp, 12 cylinder, model 567B engines. Each engine drives its own generator to power the traction motors.

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Bill Wood - Retired Webmaster
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1998 Mercedes E430
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We have an old steam locomotive about 1/2 hour from my house that was rebuild by MSU engineers over the last 30 years or so. Once they do an overnighter to w vineyard or something wifey and I will be full steam ahead...pun

http://www.mstrp.com/schedule.html

The only thing better than a brace of E-8's pulling the Crescent would be the original Southern Ry PS-4 steam locos...painted in the same green as that E-8 and kept immaculately clean, they were a magnificent sight to behold.

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Never a dull moment at Berry Hill Farm.

I should be getting my fill of old trains in a few weeks. I'll be headed up to Cass, WV for the 2008 Railfan Weekend. What a treat for photographers and train nuts. Locomotives running 3 abreast and day and night runbys. The trains will be setup with rolling stock to look as realistic as possible for photographs. We'll be riding up and down the WV mountains all day on Saturday with several scenic stops to take pictures.

Anybody else planning to go?

__________________
Bill Wood - Retired Webmaster
My Personal Website
1998 Mercedes E430
2010 Toyota Sequoia
My Photo Albums

Gawd, what fun! Cass and their geared locomotive collection is something else!

__________________
Never a dull moment at Berry Hill Farm.