Author Topic: BL2 headed across Indiana in transit to Saratoga Springs, NY  (Read 1339 times)

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Stew Winstandley

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BL2 headed across Indiana in transit to Saratoga Springs, NY
« on: February 10, 2014, 01:45:45 pm »
From the TRAINS Magazine News Wire:

Rare BL2 locomotive moving to New York
By Steve Glischinski
 Published: February 10, 2014

Saratoga & North Creek No. 52 already in operation on the railroad.
Attached Photo by John Sesonske
NORTH CREEK, N.Y. – Iowa Pacific Holdings will soon add another rare EMD BL2 to its operating diesel fleet. The company is moving former Bangor & Arookstock BL2 No. 56 to its Saratoga & North Creek Railway, where it will join another other BL2 in tourist train service. The locomotive has recently been spotted in-transit on CSX.
 
The BL2 was an early example of a road switcher locomotive and set the stage for EMD’s widely successful GP series of locomotives. Only 59 of the semi-streamlined locomotives were produced between September 1947 and May 1949. The Bangor & Aroostook Railroad owned eight BL2s, and when they were retired, one was preserved at the Cole Transportation Museum in Bangor, Maine. Two others were sold to diesel enthusiast Glenn Monhart and moved to Wisconsin. They were stored following his death in 1998 and eventually acquired by Clint Jones, who resold them to Iowa Pacific in 2008.
 
Iowa Pacific Holdings President Ed Ellis knows the units well, since one operated for a time on his Wisconsin & Calumet Railroad out of Janesville, Wis., in the 1980s and 1990s.

Former Bangor & Aroostock No. 52 is already in operation on the Saratoga & North Creek. It will soon be joined by the former No. 56. Ellis tells Trains News Wire that Metro East Industries in East St. Louis, Ill., put the unit back in operating condition. “It is going to the [Saratoga & North Creek], and will be painted in North Creek. It will go into service this spring with sister 52,” Ellis says. The unit will be painted in the SNC’s blue and silver quasi-Delaware & Hudson scheme.
 
Another ex-Bangor & Aroostock BL2 is on the Lackawaxen & Stourbridge Railroad in Pennsylvania. Two Western Maryland units have been preserved at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore and the Durbin & Greenbrier Valley Railroad in West Virginia respectively. Former Monon BL2 No. 32 is at the Kentucky Railway Museum in New Haven, Ky.