Nostalgia & History > EMD DDM45 on EJ&E Interchange in Whiting

The discussion from 12/29/2018 on the EJ&E–B&OCT interchange in Whiting, IN, jogged my fuzzy memory from 40+ years ago. I recall a flat car on the interchange in the early 1970s with a shrink-wrapped locomotive that looked like an SD45 on it. The extraordinary feature of the locomotive was the 4-axle Flexicoil trucks that accompanied it on a separate flat car(s)! The Diesel Spotter’s Guide had no such creature listed. Only years later in the Google Age did I discover that it might have been a DDM45 for export to Brazil. I can only assume that the locomotive was being forwarded to the EJ&E for shipping out of a South Chicago port. 

Can anyone confirm this sighting? Or was I dreaming?

CSL_SW1001



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/01/19 17:21 by CSL_SW1001.

While I never saw it in person, I have no doubt what you describe really did occur.  The DDM45's for Brazil were for meter-guage railroad thus they couldn't have been shipped by rail from La Grange to whatever port they were shipped out of.  Shipping them the way you describe shows like how they would have handled this move.

Vale in Brazil, still receives their new BB40-9W units from GE in much the same way - locomotives on a heavy-duty flat with the double B-trucks on a separate flatcar.

Besides headed for Brazil under a couple of different names, these have also gone to Africa for CLN via the port of Norfolk, VA.

1005

Seems like they came East on the Erie-Lackawanna. I remember seeing them.

TJY

I also saw a couple at EL's Croxton Yard. Don't know how they got shipside . . . maybe transferred to barges or carfloats at Hoboken and then loaded onto a ship using a heavy lighter (crane on a barge)? Did Hoboken have an open pier with sufficient draft to accommodate a ship?

Wow, I would have paid to see that power on a flat car at Whiting.
It must have come up the B&OCT Whiting Branch; what a sight
that must have been.  If anyone has photos of it, I will nominate
them for images of the year.