Pennsylvania Railroad E7A #5901 the sole surviving E7 is on display at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.
The E7 was a 2,000-horsepower (1,500 kW), A1A-A1A passenger train locomotive built by General Motors' Electro-Motive Division of La Grange, Illinois between 1945 – 1949.
In profile the front of the nose of an E7A was less slanted than on earlier EMD passenger locomotives, and the E7, E8, and E9 units have been nicknamed "bulldog nose" units. Some earlier units were called "shovel nose" units or "slant nose" units.
A total of four hundred and twenty-eight E7 A units and eighty-two cabless B units were built from 1945 to 1949, earning them the honor of being the most numerous passenger diesel locomotive ever built.
The 2,000 hp came from two 12 cylinder model 567A engines. Each engine drove its own electrical generator to power the two traction motors on one truck. The E7 was the eighth model in a line of passenger diesels of similar design known as EMD E-units.
By 1971, the time of Amtrak's formation, most E7s were on their way out. A few GM&O E7s did briefly see service with Amtrak, primarily running between Chicago and Milwaukee, but most ended up being retired by 1972/1973 and put into storage at Illinois Central's locomotive shops in Paducah, Kentucky.
A majority of Penn Central's E7s went into retirement upon Amtrak's start up, but a few went to wrap up their final years in commuter train service on the New York & Long Branch up until the formation of Conrail. Once Conrail was formed, the E7s were done and most were put into storage at the shops in Altoona, where they would eventually be scrapped. A few ex-PC E7s lasted into the early 1980s before finally being scrapped.
Some of the Rock Island's E7s carried on for a few more years after Amtrak's formation, but with the long-distance passenger operations eventually scaling back to just "The Peoria Rocket" and "The Quad Cities Rocket", those that were left joined the E8s on freight trains.
A Southern Pacific E7A, #6001, is on the point of a train that figures prominently in The Hitch-Hiker, a popular 1960 episode of the anthology television series, The Twilight Zone, starring Inger Stevens.
Today the sole surviving E7, PRR #5901 is on static display at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. This locomotive has been cosmetically restored, and is on indoor display. For a very brief period of time, the Indiana Railroad Museum owned a former Pennsylvania Railroad E7A, which at the time was identified as Penn Central #4206, but they later sold it off for scrap, presumably because it was in poor condition and the museum volunteers may have assumed that other museums would eventually acquire more E7s.
Trivia[]
- A Gulf, Mobile and Ohio Railroad E7A, #103-A, appears at the start and end of the 1967 film "In the Heat of the Night".
- A Southern Pacific E7A, #6001, is on the point of a train that figures prominently in "The Hitch-Hiker", a popular 1960 episode of the anthology television series, The Twilight Zone, starring Inger Stevens.
- Eventually, they were assigned to one leg of the Harrisburg-Detroit Red Arrow but, since it would take several weeks to establish a fuelling facility at Mansfield, OH, mid-way on the five hundred and seventy-five mile run, #5900 and #5901 were given random interim assignments on passenger runs between Harrisburg and Altoona, PA.
- The Great Northern EMD E7, #707, appears at the 1952 Short Film "One Cab's Family".
Gallery[]
.jpg "Kankakee IC Aug 1964 3-03 (cropped).jpg (3.08 MB)")
