National Museum of Transportation

The General Pershing Zephyr was the ninth of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad's Zephyr streamliners, and the last built as an integrated streamliner rather than a train hauled by an EMD E-unit diesel locomotive. It was constructed in 1939 with bodywork and passenger cars by Budd Company and diesel engine, electric transmission, power truck, and other locomotive equipment by General Motors Electro-Motive Corporation. Because its intended Kansas City, Missouri to St. Louis, Missouri route passed near the birthplace and boyhood home of famous World War I General John J. Pershing, the train was named after him. The power car was named Silver Charger, after Pershing's horse Charger, while the passenger cars were named after U.S. Army badges of rank — Silver Leaf, Silver Eagle, and Silver Star.

The power car, 9908 Silver Charger, was unique. It utilised a single new EMC 567 V-12 engine developing 1,000 hp, rather than the pair used in the contemporary EMC E3. It had one Martin Blomberg-designed E-unit A1A passenger truck at the front, with powered outer axles and a center idler axle, and an unpowered trailing truck, giving it the unusual wheel arrangement of A1A-2. This made it mechanically half of an E3. The back half of the power car was a baggage area. This made it similar to special power-baggage units built by EMD for the Colorado Springs section of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific "Rocky Mountain Rocket", though the latter had a carbody and E-3/E-6 styling by EMD. The "Silver Charger" was the last power unit built by Budd with the unique "Zephyr / Flying Yankee" shovelnose styling.

Wikipedia

The EMD FT is a 1,350-horsepower (1,010 kW) diesel-electric locomotive that was produced between March 1939 and November 1945, by General Motors' Electro-Motive Corporation (EMC), later known as GM Electro-Motive Division (EMD). The "F" stood for Fourteen Hundred (1400) horsepower (rounded from 1350) and the "T" for Twin, as it came standard in a two-unit set. The design was developed from the TA model built for the C,RI&P in 1937, and was similar in cylinder count, axle count, length and layout. All told 555 cab-equipped "A" units were built, along with 541 cabless booster or "B" units, for a grand total of 1,096 units. The locomotives were all sold to customers in the United States. It was the first model in EMD's very successful F-unit series of cab unit freight diesels, and was the locomotive that convinced many U.S. railroads that the diesel-electric freight locomotive was the future. Many rail historians consider the FT one of the most important locomotive models of all time.

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The Milwaukee Road's class EP-2 comprised five electric locomotives built by General Electric in 1919. They were often known as Bipolars, which referred to the bipolar electric motors they used. Among the most distinctive and powerful electric locomotives of their time, they epitomized the modernization of the Milwaukee Road. They came to symbolize the railroad during their nearly 40 years of use, and remain an enduring image of mainline electrification.

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