EMD NW5

The EMD NW5 was a road switcher diesel-electric locomotive produced by General Motors' Electro-Motive Division at its La Grange, Illinois facility between December 1946 and February 1947. Only thirteen units were manufactured in total, making the NW5 one of the rarer EMD diesel designs of the postwar era. The vast majority of production, ten locomotives, went to the Great Northern Railway. The remaining three units were divided between the Union Belt of Detroit, which lettered its two examples for the Fort Street Union Depot as numbers 1 and 2, and the Southern Railway, which received a single unit numbered 2100. The ten Great Northern locomotives proved to be durable machines, and all ten were still in service when that railroad merged into the Burlington Northern in 1970. Under Burlington Northern ownership the units were renumbered, with the leading digit changed from 1 to 9, and repainted into the new railroad's green and black livery. One unit was destroyed by fire in 1978, but the remaining nine continued working until Burlington Northern retired them in 1982, giving them a service life of approximately 35 years with their first two owners. Several units passed into the hands of shortline and regional railroads after Burlington Northern disposal, with survivors operating for carriers in Colorado, Oregon, and Minnesota. At least one, GN's former 192, eventually found a home with the North Shore Scenic Railroad in Duluth, Minnesota, where it has been preserved at the Lake Superior Railroad Museum. The Southern Railway's single unit later wound up working for the Massachusetts Central Railroad, while one of the Fort Street Union Depot locomotives eventually came to rest on static display at the Florida Railroad Museum in Parrish, Florida. The NW5 occupies a modest but interesting place in American diesel locomotive history. EMD developed it at a time when the concept of the road switcher had not yet captured widespread industry attention, and the small production run suggests the company had limited enthusiasm for the type. It was broadly comparable in concept to the Alco RS-1, which had established the road switcher formula by mounting a switcher-derived hood and prime mover on a longer frame with road trucks, and the NW5 can be understood as EMD's response to that design. However, EMD would not commit seriously to road switcher production until the early 1950s, when the enormous commercial success of that configuration became impossible to ignore.

The NW5 was rated at 1,000 horsepower and powered by the EMD 567B, a V-12 configuration of EMD's well-established 567 prime mover series. The locomotive rode on a B-B wheel arrangement, with two two-axle Blomberg B road trucks, the same truck design used on EMD's contemporary road units. The overall mechanical concept was essentially an adaptation of the NW2 switcher, taking that locomotive's hood, engine, and main generator and placing them on a frame stretched long enough to accommodate the road trucks and the larger fuel and water tanks required for extended branch and road service. The tanks were mounted beneath the frame between the trucks. A key feature distinguishing the NW5 from a conventional switcher was the inclusion of a steam generator for heating passenger cars, housed within a relatively tall short hood positioned at one end of the locomotive. The cab was placed roughly three-quarters of the way along the frame, sitting above the inboard axle of the rear truck, a layout that gave the NW5 an asymmetrical profile characteristic of early road switcher designs. This arrangement of cab, long hood, and steam generator short hood was functionally similar to the approach Alco had used on the RS-1, though EMD arrived at the configuration independently and produced far fewer examples before moving on to other priorities.