Watch in High Definition! On October 16th, 2011, the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum's newly acquired GE 70 Tonner pulled one of the museum's trains for the first time. Built in 1955, the locomotive was originally a Southern Pacific locomotive. It was numbered SP 5119 and wore the Southern Pacific Tiger Stripe paint scheme. While it never served the Campo area, it served in the San Diego region of the San Diego and Arizona Eastern Railway through downtown San Diego, El Cajon, Lemon Grove, La Mesa and Chula Vista. It was retired from SP in 1967 and resold to GE. It changed hands several times in the years after that. In 2005, it was sold to the Modesto and Empire Traction Railway. There, it was repainted into M&ET colors and renumbered 613. It was retired in 2008 and sold to Sterling Rail Inc. in 2010. In June 2011, the PSRM purchased the locomotive and trucked it into Campo on a lowbed truck in July. The locomotive has a Cooper-Bessemer FWL-6T, 6 cyl. inline, 600 h.p. engine. 70 Tonners are very unique locomotives and can only be MU'd with other 70 Tonner locomotives.
On October 16th, the museum was running one of its popular Pumpkin Express trains. The added passengers for the special event necessitated a 3 car train. The museum's GP9, SP3873, was out of service and could not be used that day. The normal procedure for lighter trains at the museum is to use the museum's GE 80 Tonner, SD&A 7285, to pull them. 3 cars are well within the pulling capacity of 7285, so it was able to pull the morning train. However, the afternoon train had been chartered for 3 additional cars. The now 6 car train would be very heavy and raised concerns about 7285 not being able to pull the train up the hill. The solution was to put SP 5119 into service. While it also couldn't pull the train single handedly, if used with 7285, the two locomotives would have plenty of power to get the 6 car train up the hill. So, 5119 was put on the train as a trailing locomotive, with 7285 as the lead unit. Since 5119 is only MU capable with other GE 70 Tonners, and 7285 isn't MU capable at all, both locomotives would need an engineer.
This video is of a cab ride on 5119 on its first run to Division and back on a museum train. It is very rare for the museum to double head a train, so this was an extra unique opportunity for photos. Enjoy the sounds of the locomotive with its Cooper-Bessemer FWL-6T engine working hard to climb the hill back to Campo.
Visit http://www.psrm.org for information on SP 5119/M&ET 613 as well as ticket sales and membership information.
Enjoy!