| Hutchinson & Northern Railway 1 at Hutchinson, Kansas on August 16, 1965, Kodachrome by Chuck Zeiler. The following is from the book, Interurban Electric Locomotives From General Electric, by Joseph A. Strapac: This locomotive was GE's second inside-frame truck electric locomotive, built for stock in January 1921 ( c/n 7867 ), weighing 30 tons. In September 1923 it was leased to the Carey Salt Company ( Hutchinson, Kansas ) for use on their client, the H&N, eventually purchased by the H&N in January 1927. In 1919 General Electric began its design of the so-called Frameless truck. In the interests of less expensive manufacturing, GE engineers dispensed with outside bearings, journal boxes, and equalizing bars. In place of the customary two axle bearings, the traction motor itself was modified and provided with a single substantial bearing in place of the usual auxiliary bearings. The gears occupied their usual locations. Each traction motor frame was cast with two pairs of lugs directly over the axle bearing to receive the ends of the equalizer bars. In addition to the usual function of truck equalizers in supporting the transom, they tied the trucks together and held all the parts in alignment. The first GE locomotive with this truck design was construction number 6988, erected at Erie in early 1919. It was a 50 ton model, an engineering prototype, and sent out to demonstrate on the Illinois Electric Railway. After the demonstration, the locomotive ( renumbered E-8 ) spent the years 1921 to 1926 working on GE's captive railroad, the East Erie Commercial Railroad, after which it was sold to the H&N as number 2. Only one other locomotive was built with this truck design, sold to the Lackawanna Railroad ( c/n 10046, built in 1926 ) for use on its Wallabout car float terminal in Brooklyn, New York as DL&W 4001. The H&N 1 was donated to the Orange Empire Museum in 1972, the H&N 2 languished in a scrap yard for years before reportedly finding its way to a museum, the DL&W was sold in 1942 to the Shawinigan Falls Terminal Railway in Canada, renumbered 7, and disappeared. |