1717

I was going through slides to scan yesterday and found this slide of the EMD MRS1s. Not the best slide of it, but the second unit back is 1717. It has a three at the end of the numbering and only one EMD MRS1 had a three in it which was 1717. I believe this will be the only shot I have of it. I have no idea why I did not take a separate slide of it, but back then I tried to avoid shots with engines coupled to the front of them because nobody would trade for them. It was taken in July of 1982 which makes it one of the last ARR photos I took for a long while. It was unusual for the EMD MRS1's to be out of the storage area like this, considering the date timing do you think they traded them in on the GP38’s or GP49’s?

Photo courtesy of Stewart Sterling

Question: Any idea why the ARR painted the USN 65-00570 in yellow & placed the #570 in large letters on the cab back in 78? A photo of it in 1977 shows it in standard Navy lettering-but by 10/78 it was fresh yellow with the large number.

Answer: Here is a link to the information on ARR 1514 ex Navy 570. Only two of the EMD MRS-1 units were maintained operational by the ARR. To use them they had to upgrade to some FRA standards including the wider walk ways. This required some more yellow paint so it appears they got a fresh coat of yellow as part of that process along with new black safety stripes. 1718 went on to repaint to become 1818 and the power for the ALCOM command train, then to Clear AF Station and then to MATI in Wasilla.

It is a guess that 570 was maintained in operational order as a backup for the military, but probably stayed in number 570 for some legal beagle reason. Some of those surplus transfers include responsibility for disposal etc. If they never actually placed it in service with an ARR number they may have been able to avoid responsibility. The other EMD units were robbed for parts to keep the fleet running. -- Pat Durand