The EMD GP39 is a 4-axle

diesel-electric locomotive A diesel locomotive is a type of railway locomotive in which the prime mover is a diesel engine. Several types of diesel locomotives have been developed, differing mainly in the means by which mechanical power is conveyed to the driving wheels ...

built by

General Motors Electro-Motive Division Progress Rail Locomotives, doing business as Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD), is an American manufacturer of diesel-electric locomotives, locomotive products and diesel engines for the rail industry. The company is owned by Caterpillar through its su ...

between June 1969 and July 1970. The GP39 was a derivative of the

GP38 The EMD GP38 is a four-axle diesel-electric locomotive built by General Motors Electro-Motive Division between January 1966 and December 1971. The locomotive's prime mover was an EMD 645 16-cylinder engine that generated . The company built 70 ...

equipped with a turbocharged

EMD 645E3 The EMD 645 is a family of diesel engines that was designed and manufactured by the Electro-Motive Division of General Motors. While the 645 series was intended primarily for locomotive, marine and stationary engine use, one 16-cylinder ve ...

12-

cylinder A cylinder (from ) has traditionally been a three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a prism with a circle as its base. A cylinder may also be defined as an infin ...

engine which generated . 23 examples of this locomotive model were built for American railroads. Burlington Northern Railway later rebuilt GP30 and GP35 locomotives that it classified as GP39s, but they were not built as such by GM/EMD.

Production History

Twenty of the original 23 were built for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, while the other buyers were Kennecott Copper (2) and Atlanta & St. Andrews Bay (1).

GP39DC

Two examples of the GP39 were built as GP39DC locomotives in June 1970. These used a DC main generator instead of the

alternator An alternator is an electrical generator that converts mechanical energy to electrical energy in the form of alternating current. For reasons of cost and simplicity, most alternators use a rotating magnetic field with a stationary armature.Gor ...

used on the standard GP39 units, but were otherwise identical. 2 examples of this locomotive model were built for

Kennecott Copper Company Kennecott Utah Copper LLC (KUC), a division of Rio Tinto Group, is a mining, smelting, and refining company. Its corporate headquarters are located in South Jordan, Utah. Kennecott operates the Bingham Canyon Mine, one of the largest open-pit ...

as 1 and 2, later sold to

Copper Basin Railway The Copper Basin Railway is an Arizona short-line railroad that operates from a connection with the Union Pacific Railroad (UP) at Magma to Winkelman, in of length. The railroad also has a branch line that runs from Ray Junction to Ray, Arizo ...

as 401 and 402.

Successor

Though the GP39 was not a popular locomotive, EMD later revisited the idea of a turbocharged GP38 with its GP39-2 in 1974.

References

External links

* Sarberenyi, Robert.
EMD GP39 Original Owners
' GP39 B-B locomotives Diesel-electric locomotives of the United States Railway locomotives introduced in 1969 Standard gauge locomotives of the United States {{diesel-loco-stub