Railfan photographers may have a reason to make a trip to Erie, Pa., this year. And then again maybe they won’t.
The Florida East Coast Railway recently announced that it will order 24 new ES44C4 locomotives from General Electric.
However, neither GE nor the FEC have indicated if the new locomotives will be built in Erie or at the new GE locomotive plant in Texas.
What is known is that the new locomotives will wear the FEC’s red and yellow “Champion” livery, Trains magazine reported on Thursday.
The “Champion” paint scheme was used on FEC’s passenger locomotives beginning in 1939 and the FEC has recently begun applying the scheme to its SD40-2 locomotives.
Delivery of the locomotives, which are the first that FEC has bought from GE, will begin in the fourth quarter of 2014.
Trains reported that FEC officials said that 11 FEC SD70M-2s will become surplus after the arrival of the new locomotives and will be removed from the company’s motive power roster.
FEC also has yet to assign road numbers to the ES44C4s units it ordered.
Tags: Erie GE locomotive factory, FEC motive power, Florida East Coast locomotives, Florida East Coast Railway, GE Transportation Erie locomotive plant
akronrrclub.wordpress.com 
January 4, 2017 at 9:40 pm |
I’m in the process of producing a PBS program called: Selling Sunshine: The Florida Trains. I’m very impressed with Todd Dillon’s images of SunRail and Amtrak. I’m wondering if it would be possible to use some of these in this new documentary. Credit will be provided and if used I would send a DVD of the program. The program is sponsored by Trains magazine.