Post by QcKraag on Jul 19, 2019 4:18:28 GMT -5
From scaletrains facebook page
Wow...wow...WOW!!! Hats off to the dedicated team of men and women behind the restoration of SP 9010, the sole surviving Krauss-Maffei ML-4000C’C’ “series” diesel-hydraulic. Here she is in a shot taken earlier this morning at her home at Niles Canyon Railway in Sunol, CA, in all her gray and scarlet glory.
Originally built for SP by Bavarian firm Krauss-Maffei in 1964, SP 9010 and her siblings were part of SP’s quest for more HP in the 1960s, not being satisfied with the domestic offerings at the time. They were diesel hydraulics, in sharp contrast to the typical diesel-electrics popular in the US. While these brutes did deliver the HP...4,000 hp via a pair of Maybach MD870 prime movers...and had some advantages over diesel-electrics, the precision-tuned K-Ms were a bit more temperamental in comparison to products from EMD and GE.
After a brief 8 years in service, SP gave up on the K-M diesel-hydraulics, with all but 9010 seeing the torch. Interestingly, SP converted 9010 into a camera car; renumbered to SP 8799, the entire nose was torched off, and a new enclosure was built, to house camera equipment and camera crew, for use in filming the right of way for SP’s locomotive simulator. This has a bit of a local connection for me, since when 8799 wasn’t on the road shooting film, it was parked on an industrial spur adjacent to an SP office in my hometown here in SoCal.
As the years went on, SP 8799 outlived its usefulness as a filming platform (an SP SD40T-2 was equipped with camera brackets on its front end to handle those duties), and in 1986, it found a new home at the California State RR Museum in Sacramento. Unfortunately, the years in the backlot weren’t very kind, with elements and vandals taking their toll.
The Pacific Locomotive Association would acquire the 8799 in 2008, moving it to its new home at Niles Canyon Railway. After nearly 11 years and many hours of labor and many, many dollars in donations, here we are; a beautifully restored SP 9010, painstakingly researched and restored to its original number, and how it appeared in its prime in SP service.
We applaud the preservation efforts of museums all over, and seeing SP 9010 looking whole again sure brings a smile to this SP modeler’s face. And I dunno...I think I got something in my eye, too. ☺️
- Paul
First Look: July 18, 2019
Nobody, not even the people working on SP 9010 for the last eleven years, had ever seen the whole locomotive, with all bodywork restored, lettered, and looking whole again, just like 1964.
Not until this morning. :-)
We took the locomotive (with the help of ex-SP passenger GP9 5623) to Sunol Depot, where we could use a hose and wash the beauty clean before Saturday's two outings with paying passengers.
It's a major milestone -- and only the first of many, as SP 9010 is welcomed into the fleet of the Niles Canyon Railway... and into the sunshine.
For SP 9010, what a long, strange trip it's been. For us... nonstop wonder. :-)
www.facebook.com/Southern-Pacific-9010-186409164738195/
