Electro-Motive Diesel (abbreviated EMD) is a brand of diesel-electric locomotives, locomotive products and diesel engines for the rail industry. Formerly a division of General Motors, EMD has been owned by Progress Rail since 2010.
Electro-Motive Diesel traces its roots to the Electro-Motive Engineering Corporation, founded in 1922 and purchased by General Motors in 1930. After purchase by GM, the company was known as GM's Electro-Motive Division. In 2005, GM sold EMD to Greenbriar Equity Group and Berkshire Partners and, in 2010, EMD was sold to Progress Rail, a subsidiary of the heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar. After the 2005 sale, the company was renamed to Electro-Motive Diesel.
EMD's headquarters and engineering facilities are based in McCook, Illinois, while its final locomotive assembly line is located in Muncie, Indiana. EMD also operates a traction motor maintenance, rebuild, and overhaul facility in San Luis Potosí, Mexico.
As of 2008, EMD employed approximately 3,260 people, and in 2010 it held approximately 30% of the market for diesel-electric locomotives in North America. Its principal competitor is Wabtec-owned GE Transportation, which held up to 70% of the North American market in 2007.
History 1920s: Foundation
Harold L. Hamilton and Paul Turner founded the Electro-Motive Engineering Corporation in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1922, soon renaming it to Electro-Motive Company (EMC). At Google Books The company developed and marketed self-propelled railcars using General Electric's newly developed internal combustion-electric propulsion and control systems.
Hamilton had started his railroading career as a fireman, then locomotive engineer, on the Southern Pacific Railroad. He became a manager with the Florida East Coast Railway before he left railroading for a marketing position with the White Motor Company in Denver, an early manufacturer of trucks and buses. Training and service agreements were part of White's marketing package that Hamilton would carry over to EMC. Aware of the needs of railroad branch line services, and the opportunities provided with GE's new internal combustion-electric propulsion and control technology, he quit his position with White and set up shop in a Chicago hotel with his partner and a designer, to develop and market a new generation of self-propelled railcars.
In 1923, EMC sold two gasoline-powered rail motor cars, one to the Chicago Great Western and the other to the Northern Pacific. EMC subcontracted the body construction to St Louis Car Company, electrical components to General Electric, and the prime mover to the Winton Engine Company of Cleveland, Ohio. The railcars were delivered in 1924 and worked well, fortunately for the fledgling company, because the sales were conditional on satisfactory performance. In 1925, EMC entered full-scale production, selling 27 railcars.
The General Motors years 1930s In 1930, General Motors (GM) was seeking to enter production of diesel engines and broaden their range of applications. They purchased the Winton Engine Company, who had in their product line a variety of stationary and marine diesel engines and spark-ignition engines for heavy vehicles. GM saw EMC's role in developing and marketing Winton-engined heavy vehicles as fitting their objectives and purchased the company shortly after the Winton acquisition, renaming it Electro-Motive Corporation (EMC), a subsidiary of GM. Supported by the GM Research Division headed by Charles F. Kettering, GM's Winton Engine Corporation focused on developing diesel engines with improved power-to-weight ratios and output flexibility suitable for mobile use. Eugene W. Kettering, son of Charles Kettering, led Winton's side of the development project.
In 1933, EMC designed the power setups for the Zephyr and M-10000 streamliners, a breakthrough in the power and speed available with their propulsion systems. The Zephyr used the first major product of the new GM-Winton venture, a 600 hp, eight cylinder version of the Winton 201A Roots blown, uniflow scavenged, unit injected, 2-stroke diesel engine. As the Budd and Pullman Standard companies entered contracts to build more diesel-powered streamliners, they became major customers for EMC. Diesel power had been shown suitable for small, lightweight, high speed trains, in addition to its more established role in yard service.
Seeing opportunities to broaden the role of diesel in railroading, EMC invested in a new locomotive factory and started development work on the locomotives that it would produce. The factory headquarters on 55th Street in McCook, Illinois, west of Chicago, remains the corporate headquarters. The 1935 EMC 1800 hp B-B development design locomotives featured the multiple-unit control systems that became the basis of cab/booster locomotive sets, and the twin engine format that would be adopted for the newest Zephyr power units in 1936 and EMC's E series streamlined passenger locomotives that their new factory began producing in 1937. Prior to their introduction of the E units EMC was in production of switch engines, which remained the mainstay of their production until dieselization of freight and passenger service hit full stride in the mid-1940s.
The GM-Winton research and development effort continued through the mid-1930s, building on experience with the Winton 201A, to develop diesel engines to better meet the specific needs of locomotive use. The fruit of that effort was GM's new 567 engine, introduced by their renamed Cleveland Diesel Engine Division in 1938. The new engine upgraded the horsepower of EMC's E series locomotives to 2000 per locomotive unit and increased reliability substantially. Also in 1938, EMC increased its reach up the chain of locomotive production by transitioning from General Electric equipment to in-house produced generators and traction motors. With Eugene Kettering moving to EMC that year, EMC moved into a leading role in further development of GM's locomotive engines.
GM-Winton-EMC's long development efforts put the company in an advantageous position relative to other developers of diesel-electric locomotion. Their nearest competitor was the American Locomotive Company (ALCO), who had produced diesel-electric switch engines since the mid-1920s, provided motive power for the Rebel streamliner trainsets in 1935, and started production of development design locomotives to compete with the E-units in 1939. EMC's other main competitor, the Baldwin Locomotive Works, had their development work with diesel delayed by their belief through the 1930s that the future of mainline service remained with steam, and by financial difficulties that effectively froze their diesel development while EMC and ALCO continued theirs. Baldwin started producing diesel-electric switch engines in 1939.
Passenger trains made little money for the railroads, but replacement of steam engines with reliable diesel units could provide railroads with a crucial difference for profitability. With standardized production of locomotives, EMC simplified the processes for ordering, manufacturing, and servicing locomotives and introduced economies of scale that would lower unit costs. EMC offered support services including financing, training, and field maintenance that would ease the transition from steam to diesel and boost their market in the last years before US entry into World War II. The performance of the new 567 engine in passenger locomotives also built confidence in the viability of diesel power for freight service.
In 1939, the company built a four-unit freight locomotive demonstrator, the FT, and began a tour of the continent's railroads. The tour was a success. Western railroads in particular saw that the diesels could free them from dependence on scarce water supplies for steam locomotives. In 1940, after incorporating dynamic braking at the suggestion of customers, they were receiving their first orders for the new freight locomotive.
1940s
General Motors moved production of locomotive engines under the authority of EMC to create the GM Electro-Motive Division (EMD) on January 1, 1941. With that move, EMD became a fully self-contained development, production, marketing, and service entity. Nonlocomotive products (large marine and stationary diesel engines) continued under GM's Cleveland Diesel Engine Division for another twenty years.
In January 1941 EMD delivered the first FT unit to the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, numbered Unit 100, and through that year they were in full-stride production of road and switch locomotives, becoming the world's biggest producer. America's entry into World War II temporarily slowed EMD's locomotive production; United States Navy ships gained priority for diesel power and the petroleum crisis of 1942–43 made coal-fired steam a more attractive option. The War Production Board stopped production of new passenger equipment between September 1942 and December 1944. Later in the war, diesel locomotive production for freight service was picking up as more locomotives were needed to haul wartime supplies. By the time the FT model was replaced in 1945, 555 cab units and 541 booster units had been produced.
EMD emerged from the war years with major advantages over its competitors in diesel locomotive production, having entered them with fully developed lines of mainline road diesel locomotives while war production allocations restricted their competitors, principally ALCO and Baldwin, to selling mainly diesel switchers and steam locomotives of pre-existing designs. That gave an advantage to EMD's state of technical development with higher powered diesels in the critical postwar years. New model passenger locomotives were delivered starting in February 1945. New models of their freight locomotive followed later in 1945 and 1946.
By the late 1940s the vast majority of American railroads had decided to dieselize their locomotive fleets. Passenger services facing increasing competition from air and automotive travel rapidly replaced steam for image and cost reasons, but the biggest growth market was for freight locomotives. To meet post-war demands, EMD opened another locomotive production facility in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1948.
Alco-GE was EMD's strongest competitor during the dieselization era, having produced the first road-switcher diesel locomotives in 1941 and gained about a 26% market share of diesel locomotives, mostly for switching and short-haul applications, as of 1946. ALCO's higher-powered locomotives for mainline service were less successful, as they were plagued by reliability problems. In 1948 the ALCO-GE partnership developed a prototype gas-turbine-electric locomotive; series production began in 1952. Latecomers to the diesel locomotive business Baldwin, Fairbanks-Morse, and Lima-Hamilton struggled in the market as their products failed to gain a solid reputation. In 1949 EMD's new EMD GP7 road switcher locomotive entered the market niche previously held by ALCO and Baldwin, and by 1950 it was clear that EMD's competitors could not break its position in mainline road diesels.
1950s In 1950, EMD's new plant in London, Ontario, Canada, began production. The plant was operated by the Canadian subsidiary General Motors Diesel (GMD), producing existing EMD as well as unique GMD designs for the Canadian domestic and export markets. GMD were, as a Canadian concern, able to sell products to other British Commonwealth nations without the tariffs encumbering trade with non-Commonwealth nations, gaining the same market access as ALCO and Baldwin through their subsidiaries Montreal Locomotive Works and Canadian Locomotive Company.