After 25 years of being a transfer motor, class F #454 had an electrical room fire and was retired and cut up for parts (the frame + trucks to ILW, the electrical components to Portland, and the bodyshell onto a flatcar that was shoved onto the Iberville deadline.

This is what was made from the frame + trucks. The (USA) EPA was about to start regulating emissions on railroad equipment, and the 251s that ILW specialised in weren’t even slightly capable of meeting even the weakest standards. So they, realizing that their lucrative business of remanufacturing locomotives was at risk of being regulated out of existance, spent a small fortune on various clean(er) prime movers and built up a handful of testbeds to try them out on.

The original configuration, which worked well until one of the prime movers failed, was two 1850HP Caterpillar 3516’s driving a pair of alternators, which were rectified into a DC bus driving six inverters (one per axle) and their associated 3-phase traction motors.

It was not designed as a genset locomotive, but due to the design it was possible to manually shut down one of the prime movers and contine operating at a little less than half power.

In 2016, after 19 years of service, one of the 3516s failed, so when it went into the TdM shops for repair both of them were ripped out and replaced with a pair of Cummins QSK60s, making 718 into the diesel-only equivalent of the class DP2 dual-power locomotives.

It is currently in operation on the D&H/OSW/CSS&SB’s Chicago extension.