Other Editorials

Choo Chew

Jim Dollinger
Saturday, January 14, 2006

F. Reck's "On Time" 1948

In the spring of 1935, while structural steel was rising skyward on the LaGrange site, Electro-Motive had three 1800 horsepower locomotive units under construction at the Erie Works of General Electric, and two at the St. Louis Car shops.

By this time, the articulated streamliners had made a name for themselves. In October, 1934, the Union Pacific had taken delivery on its second streamliner, the five-car articulated M-10001, powered by a 900 horsepower Diesel engine.

At ten p.m., on October 22, the M-10001 left Los Angeles for New York in an epochal attempt to set a new transcontinental record.

By 1940, Electro-Motive was producing a line of locomotives covering the major needs of the railroads.

In 1947, the year of Electro-Motive's twenty fifth anniversary, tourists driving along the highway, farmers in the field, and small-town shoppers on their way home with groceries rubbed their eyes in amazement when they gazed down the railroad track and beheld something entirely foreign to their experience...The train, they were informed, was the General Motors Train of Tomorrow.

2003 The looters plan to sell Locomotive, disposing of another asset, as they no longer have "men of the mind" to operate the corporation.

Who is John Galt?