Chicago Burlington & Quincy Railroad F2 153A at Galesburg, Illinois on July 4, 1961, Kodachrome duplicate from Lee Hastman, Chuck Zeiler collection. I make a point to not post duplicate slides, but in this case I will make an exception. Number 153A was built in July 1946 (c/n 3024) and traded to EMD in June 1964. In 1946 the Burlington ordered 10 F2's with the intention of mating them with pairs of FT's. The FT's had been delivered in 1944 as semi-permanently coupled A-B-B-A sets constituting a single locomotive. The Q desired better utilization of the locomotives and 5400 horsepower locomotive was more than needed for the trains dispatched at the time. Five FT locomotives were broken into A-B sets and semi-permanently coupled to the F2's producing a 4050 hp locomotive. The FT's so modified were renumbered into the 150 number series, and the cab unit was given a C suffix. In this case, F2 153A is connected by drawbar to FT's 153B and 153C (ex-FT's 102B and 102A), producing a single locomotive numbered 153. |