The first from scratch class E’s – the class E2, because the two prototypes were assigned to class E1 – came out of the Portland shops with a handful of refinements that were new to this design. Firstly, the lacy-framed trucks that GE supplied on classes B1 & B2 and the cast trucks that came on the B3s were replaced with Portland-designed welded plate truck (a bit heavier, but this was sprung weight so it was a fair exchange for a design that was easier to fabricate), secondly the traditional diamond-framed pantographs were replaced with modern single-armed units, and thirdly the electrical system was updated so that it could produce ~12% more HP to go along with the slightly heavier locomotives.

Plus they were geared for higher speed – 75 instead of 60mph, so on the non-hilly parts of the system the dispatchers were able to push more trains through than the slower class Bs were capable of doing.

Six of them were built in 1968 for the Montréal ↔ Québec electrification, and another two were built in 1974 to replace recently retired class B’s 214,216,217. Alas, the US economy fell down a well in the 1970s, and then the D&H was purchased just as it started to show some tiny signs of improvement in 1984, and by the time more motors were needed technology had moved on, so these 8 were the only ones ever built.

In the early 1990s, they went back to Portland (with the exception of #450, noted below) to have their drivetrain updated to work under AC wire, and had their rear cabs converted (a'la Milwaukee Road) into an equipment bay to hold the electrical gear that had to be moved to make room for the new transformer that was needed.

Unlike the rest of the E2s, #450 was updated at the D&H’s Colonie shops, with the rear cab removed and replaced with a simple boxcab end. The electronics are slightly different, so it has been reclassified as class E3. It has slightly more tractive effort, but the same horsepower as its Portland-modified kin.