WM Diesels 7436 and 7471 Move to Georges Creek Railway (Photos)

At 12:43 PM on Wednesday, April 5, former Western Maryland Railway SD-35 locomotive 7436 and former WM SD-40 locomotive 7471 cleared Baltimore Street westbound in downtown Cumberland for the journey to the interchange with the Georges Creek Railway, roughly 20 miles up the Potomac Valley. They were dead in tow as part of a four-unit locomotive consist.

The Electro Motive Division of General Motors built WM 7436 as a SD-35 in 1964, and WM 7471 as an SD-40 two years later. Both are rare and classic early 2nd Generation High-Horsepower locomotives.

This was not a historic movement.

It was the kind of everyday movement of equipment between one railroad and another that otherwise would not warrant a yawn. Except that in this case, a pair of exquisitely painted former WM units were coupled behind a pair of CSX SD-70MACs built by EMD in the early 1990s—three decades after the WM units.

Same builder, same series, same factory—only the technology inside the SD-70MACs is utterly different from that inside the SD-35 and SD-40. The WM units even looked small behind the much more massive SD-70MACs. To the untrained eye, it would have seemed like nothing out of the ordinary.

Of course, General Motors sold off EMD years ago. Tthe LaGrange locomotive plant has been sold and razed, and the MACs themselves are nearing the end of their economic lives. This was an ironic—and, iconic—pairing of locomotives.

The SD-70MACs were at the head of what is essentially a local train west from Cumberland, working blocks of cars to places like Luke (the interchange with the Georges Creek Railway), Grafton, and the former Ohio River line of the B&O. There isn’t much intermediate business—but it is still an important region for industrial and chemical traffic.

Luke/Westernport (on the former B&O and WM main lines in the Potomac River Valley west of Cumberland) is the site of the massive former West Virginia Pulp & Paper paper mill complex, now Verso Corporation. Georges Creek Railroad provides switching services between Verso’s primary plant and a warehouse/production complex a few miles away along the former Western Maryland Railway main line.

WMSR painted the Western Maryland locomotives for the Georges Creek Railway, and is delighted that these classic 1960s engines are once again on home rails. For a few minutes on a glorious Spring day, there were again Western Maryland big diesels out on the main line at track speed. To say the least, it was an interesting locomotive consist.