DLP #4700 in VIA rail colours

When VIA Rail Canada retired all of their FPA/FPB-4s, the DLP joined in the unseemly scramble for units and ended up with 3 A and 2 B units. They were quickly outfitted with reset safety devices (the reason that VIA dumped them; the Canadian Transport Commission mandated RSDs on the lead units of passenger trains after a VIA train collided with a CP freight, killing 23 people in the process. VIA didn’t want to spend the money updating these units, but the DLP did) and leased back to VIA for a few years before the tide of EMD F40PHs flushed all of the first generation units off the system, then kicked around various shortlines & tourist operations (4702 was wrecked during one of these leases, and then sat in the deadline until 2018, when it was rebuilt with a Cummins QSK50, and then leased to a tourist railway in the United States), but by 2020 all of them, modulo the 4702, were out of service and scheduled for rebuilding with new prime movers & an ac drivetrain.

In 2024, 4 more FPA-4s joined the DLP’s fleet; the Napa Valley Wine Train traded theirs to ILW (with the understanding that they would not be scrapped), which then sold them to the DLP, which has added them to their collection of to-be-reengined FPA-4s.

  • Copyright © 2024 by Jessica L. Parsons (orc@pell.portland.or.us) unless otherwise noted
    Mon Aug 21 17:40:11 PDT 2023