When 36 Did Not Become 48
For several years from the early 1970s through to the late 1990s, I thought that Union Pacific GP9 cab unit number 321 was the first GP9 on UP to receive 48-inch radiator fans. I was mistaken.
Back in 1973, I was in the EMD parts warehouse in Ogden, Utah. In the foyer, they had a full set of EMD parts catalogs, mounted in one of those standard, flip-up EMD catalog racks. In the same rack, there was a set of an EMD sales department newsletter, called “Inside EMD.” It contained all kinds of interesting stuff, especially from the early 1950s. One bit of information I’ve always remembered was it called out specific orders when options were available, or no longer available.
Concerning “Inside EMD,” Preston Cook, an EMD historian, wrote:
Inside EMD was originally introduced as a Parts Department newsletter to notify customers and field sales personnel of the availability of new and improved parts, special deals on parts through sales or inventory closeouts, or of matters of policy pertaining to the sales and marketing of parts. The publication was introduced in the middle of 1953 and issues appeared at irregular intervals for several decades. The name “Inside EMD” was subsequently adapted in the 1980s for the internal company newspaper.
The original “Inside EMD,” printed in the 1950s and 1960s, was one of the most basic of the EMD internal commercial publications. It was printed on inexpensive paper and seldom included any photographs. However it frequently contained technical information that was not conveyed in any other publications.
One small item that I recall seeing during my visit to the EMD Ogden warehouse in 1973 was that the first GP9 to receive 48-inch radiator fans was order number 5552-21. I wrote the info on a scrap of paper and headed home. Using my recently acquired copy of the EMD 1972 product reference, I looked up order number 5552. I found that it was for UP 300-349 and 300B-349B, built in July to October 1957, and that 5552-21 was UP 320, being the 21st unit of order 5552. Later research found that EMD regularly made arrangements to retrofit previous units in a particular order to the latest configuration, meaning that UP 300-319 likely received 48-inch fans after leaving the factory. I had not seen a builder’s photo of any of these units to verify that assumption that UP 321 was the first.
Back in May 1999, while doing research among photographs of Union Pacific diesel locomotives, I noticed that the 300s were delivered with 48-inch radiator fans. That break between 321 (built in July 1957) and 322 (built in September 1957) was where I thought the break was between those delivered with 36-inch fans and 48-inch fans, according to that EMD publication I saw 25 years before, making me think that the units delivered with 36 inch fans were retrofitted within six months with 48-inch fans (I mentioned this in a photo caption for the photo of UP 300, taken in April 1958, in my article about UP’s turbocharged GP9s in the November-December 1996 issue of Diesel Era). I discovered that this was wrong after looking again at Harold Ranks’ photo of UP 306 being delivered in July 1957. The photo shows the unit with 48-inch radiator fans, and, by the way, also showing that the 300s were the first units with their trucks painted with the new standard color of bright-aluminum.
I’ve often wished that I had paid better attention to those books in the EMD warehouse. They closed their Ogden warehouse in about 1978, when they opened their warehouse in Commerce, California.
I have updated the general note for the 300 class GP9s on Union Pacific.
