MTH ELECTRIC TRAINS

While the 1350 hp Electro Motive FT was The Diesel That Did It - retired the steam engine - this was The Diesel That Started It. The 300 hp Alco-GE-Ingersoll Rand boxcab was the first production Diesel-electric produced in North America. General Electric had been experimenting with internal combustion rail power for nearly two decades when, in the mid-1920s, it formed a partnership with Ingersoll Rand and Alco to manufacture Diesel-electrics. GE made the traction motors and generator, IR supplied the diesel motor, and Alco built the mechanical parts. In the summer of 1925, the Central Railroad of New Jersey bought the first boxcab demonstrator, and CNJ #1000 became the first production Diesel-electric owned by an American railroad. In December, the second engine in the production run became Baltimore & Ohio #1, and orders soon followed from the Chicago & North Western, Reading, and Erie. The Diesel revolution had quietly begun.

CNJ 1000 had a three-decade career switching the Bronx Terminal Yard, acquiring a Jersey Central Lines "Miss Liberty" paint job along the way. In 1957 it went to a well-earned retirement at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore. B&O #1 had an equally long career in Manhattan and is preserved today at the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis. For 2007, M.T.H. offers the first-ever O scale model of this landmark locomotive.