Nostalgia & History > Switcher Sat - SSLV style

My second roll of film, 1976

Is this still extant?

CS890

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Yes, it still is sitting in Blanca,CO. It needs to find a new home sometime soon though.
Nathan Z.

Looks like it would be more at home in a tank battle!

If anyone asks me to vote for the ugliest unit I've ever seen, I now have a new opinion after seeing this creature. Can someone share details on this beast to include the date it was built (I assume it was a home built unit?) and what the mechanical details?

Thanks for the post.

found this on the web at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_San_Luis_Valley_Railroad

They took the D&RGW steam locomotive tender frame (D&RGW #964) which they had purchased in 1950 and after an abortive attempt at building a locomotive on the tender frame, a successful machine was completed in 1955.[9] It was a strange looking locomotive they called the D-500. It rolled on standard locomotive tender trucks which were powered by a sprocket and chain drive. Power was from an International Harvester, 1091 cubic inch, UD24 diesel engine. The power went through a Caterpillar hydraulic transmission, which in turn powered an old Euclid truck axle, which transmitted power through sprockets and chains to the axles.[12] The odd locomotive, which resembled a caboose, was built in a cupola style for visibility and to ease the installation of the prime mover. The locomotive was built by SSLV mechanics in Mesita Colorado.

Valmont

That's so damned ugly I'm surprised Amtrak doesn't own it.

Frisco1522 Wrote:
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> That's so damned ugly I'm surprised Amtrak doesn't
> own it.


Looking at it...and looking at it again, then looking at some P42 pics as well as some NJT pics....I am pretty sure Mr. Vergara has a photo of it in his office.

valmont Wrote:

> They took the D&RGW steam locomotive tender frame
> (D&RGW #964) which they had purchased in 1950 and
> after an abortive attempt at building a locomotive
> on the tender frame, a successful machine was
> completed in 1955.[9] It was a strange looking
> locomotive they called the D-500.

If I recall Colorado's Loneliest Railroad (ref. 9) correctly, the "abortive attempt" was even stranger. On the same frame, they originally built a motorhome-like body, and the "prime mover" turned an axle in the middle of the locomotive with two rubber tires that rode on the rails. The flanged-wheel trucks on the ends kept it on the tracks but were unpowered. Here's a 1953 Otto Perry photo from the Denver Public Library archive showing what I think is this earlier iteration of the SSLV homebuilt:

http://photoswest.org/cgi-bin/imager?00015129+OP-15129

Frequent blowouts were reportedly a problem with this system, prompting the rebuild into the D-500 you see in the photo. SLVS motorcar M-300 had a rubber tire drive at one point too, seen in this 1955 Rob Richardson photo:

http://photoswest.org/cgi-bin/imager?00401447+RR-1447

The SLVS's internal combustion power might be what you'd call an extreme case of form-follows-function...

Brings to mind the attempt back in the early 1930's by Ludlow & Southern (that's Ludlow CA, in the Mojave Desert) workers to fit a Holt tractor engine onto the frame of a former New York Central 4-6-0. The project was abandoned at about the time the railroad was abandoned, and author David Myrick, who published the photo in "Railroads of Nevada and Eastern California, Vol. 2", commented, "....historians can only speculate as to what kind of superstructure was envisioned for this monstrosity."

Merrimac or Monitor?

Anybody know when was the last time this creature actually ran?

To have heard Amtrak talk, this was the power that Iowa Pacific was going to put on the ski train.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/10 15:22 by Waybiller.