The "Beep"

The "Beep" Santa Fe's SWBLW

History
One of Santa Fe's most interesting, enduring, and endearing exercises in life sized "kit-bashing" was a curious creation that rolled out of the railroad's Cleburne, TX shop in December 1970. Officially dubbed an SWBLW, it had a cab whose contours clearly said "Baldwin" and frame to match, but that was about all that matched. Perched atop the frame was an EMD GP7-style long hood with a 16-567BC engine chanting away inside. Crammed beneath the frame were a pair of EMD Blomberg trucks, occupying space that was only meant to accomodate Type-A switcher trucks. As David Lustig so aptly put it in a sidebar to his article The Creatures from Cleburne (reference 4), the locomotive looked like five quarts of water in a four quart container. Various monikers have been applied to it over the years. It has carried numbers 2450, 1160, and 1460, and has been called everything from a VO1000u to an SW7. The name most commonly heard in railfan circles, and one that just seems to fit somehow, is the "Beep," a contraction of Baldwin Geep. To be sure, Santa Fe didn't invent the concept of putting an EMD 567-series engine in a Baldwin switcher. As early as 1953, the Nashville Chattanooga & St. Louis railroad had sent three well-worn VO1000's and one VO660 to the EMD plant at LaGrange, IL for repowering. The locomotives came back sporting new EMD-style switcher hoods housing new 567 power plants attached to the old Baldwin frame and cab. A minor flurry of similar repowerings took place over the next decade or so. Typically, an 8 or 12-cylinder 567 prime mover of 900-1200 hp replaced the old Baldwin 606 or 608-series engine. When EMD performed the transplants, the locomotives usually received EMD switcher-style hoods. A few railroads did the repowerings themselves in their company shops, and as a result, some 567-repowered Baldwins managed to retain their old Baldwin hoods and radiators, with only a telltale pair of exhaust stacks indicating what had gone on inside. Railroads such as CNW, MKT, and Reading amassed a dozen or more EMD-powered Baldwins apiece before the craze began to fade in the early 60's. According to The Second Diesel Spotter's Guide, the trade-in credit available from EMD or GE for turning in old locomotives on entirely new power had by then become more financially attractive than repowering. Some Baldwins owned by the Navy and US Steel were repowered as late as the early 80's, but Santa Fe's one and only experiment in Baldwin repowering may well have been the last time such a repowering was attempted by a common carrier. By 1969, Santa Fe had already traded in its large fleet of EMD FT cab units on new locomotives, and was facing a similar prospect with its hundreds of worn out F3's, F7's, and F9's when management decided to buck the trend. The large, underutilized, steam-era shop complex at Cleburne, TX was revived and put to work seeing if they could turn the old cab units into 1500hp roadswitchers roughly equivalent to EMD's GP7. The gamble paid off - the resulting locomotives, dubbed CF7's, could be produced in-house and still qualify for new locomotive tax credits, offering a considerable savings over trading in the F's on new locomotives of similar horsepower. The program ultimately went on to produce some 233 CF7's before Santa Fe literally ran out of F-units to rebuild. Meanwhile, Santa Fe's fleet of end-cab switcher locomotives was also rapidly nearing retirement. Although Santa Fe's road power of the 40's and 50's had been overwhelmingly EMD, the switcher fleet was a varied assortment of models from EMD, Alco, Baldwin, and FM. By 1970, only EMD was still in the locomotive business, so an in-kind rebuild of most of the switchers would have been an expensive and unrealistic proposition. In the spirit of the CF7 conversions, the railroad decided to see if remanufacturing its non-EMD switchers with EMD powerplants could be a viable alternative. The concept that ultimately developed at Cleburne was far more ambitious than the switcher repowerings of the 50's and 60's. Those programs had turned out locomotives that were quite clearly still switchers - units with a 1000hp or so riding on rigid, low-speed switcher trucks. Santa Fe's product was to be somewhere between a switcher and a light roadswitcher. VO1000 #2220, a July 1943 product of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, was selected as the guinea pig, and the hood, engine, Westinghouse electrical and control gear, and the switcher trucks were discarded. The heavy cast steel frame (still bearing one of its original round Baldwin builders plates), the cab, and a few other pieces were retained. To those parts, the shop forces fitted a GP7-style hood (fabricated from scratch in-house), an EMD 16-567BC engine rated at 1500hp, generator, controls, and Blomberg-B road trucks. If that doesn't sound easy, it wasn't. Anyone who has attempted to build scale models of the resulting locomotive can attest to the challenges of just fitting the Blomberg trucks into the available space (see references 1 and 2). The prototype's frame required a considerable amount of modification before it would accept the EMD engine and trucks, too much modification as it turned out. While the resulting locomotive was a success, it was doomed to be a one-off. The economics of a large scale Santa Fe switcher repowering program just didn't pencil out. Magazine Extra 2200 South reported that Santa Fe had also set aside FM H10-44's #501 and 502 and Alco S-4 #1532 for possible repowering, but they were eventually scrapped instead. The solitary prototype emerged from the Cleburne shops in December 1970. The strange looking locomotive was numbered 2450, a safe distance below the "2500-class" CF7's that were being numbered downward from 2649 as Cleburne churned them out. The model designation that appeared for it in timetable special instructions and in the summary tables in the Santa Fe Locomotive Folio Section K was SWBLW, apparently from Switcher, Baldwin Locomotive Works. The actual locomotive diagram in the June 1987 edition of Section K identified the unit merely as "Switcher." Railfans, however, quickly dubbed the unit a "Beep," or occasionally a "Bleep." Whatever its designation, locomotive 2450 soon found a nitch for itself in south Texas. Crews appreciated the superior riding qualities of the Blomberg trucks compared to the Type-A switcher trucks under most other switchers. The locomotive was also several tons heavier than a typical GP7, giving it more tractive effort for switching long cuts of cars. For many years, 2450 was leased to the Port Terminal Railroad Association in Houston, a switching road jointly owned by several of the railroads serving the area. By late 1974, the CF7 program had reached number 2500 and kept right on going down into the 2400's. Santa Fe renumbered the Beep to 1160 in August 1974 to get it out of the way (the CF7 program would turn out a new 2450 in 1977 and conclude at 2417 the following year). In January 1977, Santa Fe renumbered its dwindling supply of unrebuilt EMD switchers into the 1400-series. The Beep was also included in the renumbering, becoming the 1460. By the mid-1980's, 1460 was assigned to Cleburne as the shop switcher. In 1985, the unit received a number of external modifications. An air conditioner was fitted to the cab, and the rear cab windows were modified from their original Baldwin pattern to a new arrangement featuring three panes of glass per side (see photos below). This allowed the use of standard sized window glass common to many EMD locomotives. At the same time, the switcher received a fresh coat of blue and yellow paint. Mercifully, the paint shop did not attempt to fit a blue and yellow warbonnet to the unit, but merely repainted it in the same old obsolete (but in this case better looking) 1960's version of the blue and yellow freight scheme. In 1987, Santa Fe's last standard EMD switcher, SW900 #1453, was retired, leaving the 1460 as the only example of an end cab switcher on the entire roster. The Beep continued to work at Cleburne until the shops closed at the end of 1987. It was then ferried north to Kansas and put to work as the shop switcher at the Argentine shops in Kansas City, KS. The unit bounced back and forth between the shops at Argentine and Topeka, serving as the shop switcher at either location, for the next decade. At some point in the early 1990's, remote control equipment was added so that the 1460 could be operated by a person on the ground. Externally, this modification manifested itself as a set of colored lights on the side of the cab. How frequently the unit was used in remote mode is not known. The lights disappeared sometime between February and September 2007. The Beep continued to serve through the BNSF merger, and was one of only three blue and yellow units not slated to receive a new number in the sweeping renumbering program that followed. The unit did receive BNSF sublettering under the road number on the side of the cab, as well as a four-stack exhaust manifold, following the merger. There were occasional rumors of the 1460's imminent demise, but somehow it managed to evade the inevitable until in December 2008, when it was laid up bad order at Topeka. On May 14, 2009, the unit departed Topeka dead-in-tow, headed for Barstow, CA and a new home at the Western America Railroad Museum. WARM's collection also includes FP45 95 and numerous other Santa Fe artifacts. Upon retirement, the 1460 had easily achieved the longest service life of any Santa Fe-rebuilt locomotive, some 38 years. The contemporary CF7's were far more numerous, but few stayed on the Santa Fe roster longer than 15 years. The 1460 was also the last repowered Baldwin active on a Class-1, though some repowered Baldwins continue to labor for shortlines and the military. The locomotive may have cost too much to produce, but it's hard to argue that the Santa Fe didn't get its money's worth out of the Beep.

History

One of Santa Fe's most interesting, enduring, and endearing exercises in life sized "kit-bashing" was a curious creation that rolled out of the railroad's Cleburne, TX shop in December 1970. Officially dubbed an SWBLW, it had a cab whose contours clearly said "Baldwin" and frame to match, but that was about all that matched. Perched atop the frame was an EMD GP7-style long hood with a 16-567BC engine chanting away inside. Crammed beneath the frame were a pair of EMD Blomberg trucks, occupying space that was only meant to accomodate Type-A switcher trucks. As David Lustig so aptly put it in a sidebar to his article The Creatures from Cleburne (reference 4), the locomotive looked like five quarts of water in a four quart container. Various monikers have been applied to it over the years. It has carried numbers 2450, 1160, and 1460, and has been called everything from a VO1000u to an SW7. The name most commonly heard in railfan circles, and one that just seems to fit somehow, is the "Beep," a contraction of Baldwin Geep.

To be sure, Santa Fe didn't invent the concept of putting an EMD 567-series engine in a Baldwin switcher. As early as 1953, the Nashville Chattanooga & St. Louis railroad had sent three well-worn VO1000's and one VO660 to the EMD plant at LaGrange, IL for repowering. The locomotives came back sporting new EMD-style switcher hoods housing new 567 power plants attached to the old Baldwin frame and cab. A minor flurry of similar repowerings took place over the next decade or so. Typically, an 8 or 12-cylinder 567 prime mover of 900-1200 hp replaced the old Baldwin 606 or 608-series engine. When EMD performed the transplants, the locomotives usually received EMD switcher-style hoods. A few railroads did the repowerings themselves in their company shops, and as a result, some 567-repowered Baldwins managed to retain their old Baldwin hoods and radiators, with only a telltale pair of exhaust stacks indicating what had gone on inside. Railroads such as CNW, MKT, and Reading amassed a dozen or more EMD-powered Baldwins apiece before the craze began to fade in the early 60's. According to The Second Diesel Spotter's Guide, the trade-in credit available from EMD or GE for turning in old locomotives on entirely new power had by then become more financially attractive than repowering. Some Baldwins owned by the Navy and US Steel were repowered as late as the early 80's, but Santa Fe's one and only experiment in Baldwin repowering may well have been the last time such a repowering was attempted by a common carrier.

By 1969, Santa Fe had already traded in its large fleet of EMD FT cab units on new locomotives, and was facing a similar prospect with its hundreds of worn out F3's, F7's, and F9's when management decided to buck the trend. The large, underutilized, steam-era shop complex at Cleburne, TX was revived and put to work seeing if they could turn the old cab units into 1500hp roadswitchers roughly equivalent to EMD's GP7. The gamble paid off - the resulting locomotives, dubbed CF7's, could be produced in-house and still qualify for new locomotive tax credits, offering a considerable savings over trading in the F's on new locomotives of similar horsepower. The program ultimately went on to produce some 233 CF7's before Santa Fe literally ran out of F-units to rebuild.

Meanwhile, Santa Fe's fleet of end-cab switcher locomotives was also rapidly nearing retirement. Although Santa Fe's road power of the 40's and 50's had been overwhelmingly EMD, the switcher fleet was a varied assortment of models from EMD, Alco, Baldwin, and FM. By 1970, only EMD was still in the locomotive business, so an in-kind rebuild of most of the switchers would have been an expensive and unrealistic proposition. In the spirit of the CF7 conversions, the railroad decided to see if remanufacturing its non-EMD switchers with EMD powerplants could be a viable alternative.

The concept that ultimately developed at Cleburne was far more ambitious than the switcher repowerings of the 50's and 60's. Those programs had turned out locomotives that were quite clearly still switchers - units with a 1000hp or so riding on rigid, low-speed switcher trucks. Santa Fe's product was to be somewhere between a switcher and a light roadswitcher. VO1000 #2220, a July 1943 product of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, was selected as the guinea pig, and the hood, engine, Westinghouse electrical and control gear, and the switcher trucks were discarded. The heavy cast steel frame (still bearing one of its original round Baldwin builders plates), the cab, and a few other pieces were retained. To those parts, the shop forces fitted a GP7-style hood (fabricated from scratch in-house), an EMD 16-567BC engine rated at 1500hp, generator, controls, and Blomberg-B road trucks.

If that doesn't sound easy, it wasn't. Anyone who has attempted to build scale models of the resulting locomotive can attest to the challenges of just fitting the Blomberg trucks into the available space (see references 1 and 2). The prototype's frame required a considerable amount of modification before it would accept the EMD engine and trucks, too much modification as it turned out. While the resulting locomotive was a success, it was doomed to be a one-off. The economics of a large scale Santa Fe switcher repowering program just didn't pencil out. Magazine Extra 2200 South reported that Santa Fe had also set aside FM H10-44's #501 and 502 and Alco S-4 #1532 for possible repowering, but they were eventually scrapped instead.

The solitary prototype emerged from the Cleburne shops in December 1970. The strange looking locomotive was numbered 2450, a safe distance below the "2500-class" CF7's that were being numbered downward from 2649 as Cleburne churned them out. The model designation that appeared for it in timetable special instructions and in the summary tables in the Santa Fe Locomotive Folio Section K was SWBLW, apparently from Switcher, Baldwin Locomotive Works. The actual locomotive diagram in the June 1987 edition of Section K identified the unit merely as "Switcher." Railfans, however, quickly dubbed the unit a "Beep," or occasionally a "Bleep."

Whatever its designation, locomotive 2450 soon found a nitch for itself in south Texas. Crews appreciated the superior riding qualities of the Blomberg trucks compared to the Type-A switcher trucks under most other switchers. The locomotive was also several tons heavier than a typical GP7, giving it more tractive effort for switching long cuts of cars. For many years, 2450 was leased to the Port Terminal Railroad Association in Houston, a switching road jointly owned by several of the railroads serving the area.

By late 1974, the CF7 program had reached number 2500 and kept right on going down into the 2400's. Santa Fe renumbered the Beep to 1160 in August 1974 to get it out of the way (the CF7 program would turn out a new 2450 in 1977 and conclude at 2417 the following year). In January 1977, Santa Fe renumbered its dwindling supply of unrebuilt EMD switchers into the 1400-series. The Beep was also included in the renumbering, becoming the 1460.

By the mid-1980's, 1460 was assigned to Cleburne as the shop switcher. In 1985, the unit received a number of external modifications. An air conditioner was fitted to the cab, and the rear cab windows were modified from their original Baldwin pattern to a new arrangement featuring three panes of glass per side (see photos below). This allowed the use of standard sized window glass common to many EMD locomotives. At the same time, the switcher received a fresh coat of blue and yellow paint. Mercifully, the paint shop did not attempt to fit a blue and yellow warbonnet to the unit, but merely repainted it in the same old obsolete (but in this case better looking) 1960's version of the blue and yellow freight scheme.

In 1987, Santa Fe's last standard EMD switcher, SW900 #1453, was retired, leaving the 1460 as the only example of an end cab switcher on the entire roster. The Beep continued to work at Cleburne until the shops closed at the end of 1987. It was then ferried north to Kansas and put to work as the shop switcher at the Argentine shops in Kansas City, KS. The unit bounced back and forth between the shops at Argentine and Topeka, serving as the shop switcher at either location, for the next decade. At some point in the early 1990's, remote control equipment was added so that the 1460 could be operated by a person on the ground. Externally, this modification manifested itself as a set of colored lights on the side of the cab. How frequently the unit was used in remote mode is not known. The lights disappeared sometime between February and September 2007.

The Beep continued to serve through the BNSF merger, and was one of only three blue and yellow units not slated to receive a new number in the sweeping renumbering program that followed. The unit did receive BNSF sublettering under the road number on the side of the cab, as well as a four-stack exhaust manifold, following the merger. There were occasional rumors of the 1460's imminent demise, but somehow it managed to evade the inevitable until in December 2008, when it was laid up bad order at Topeka. On May 14, 2009, the unit departed Topeka dead-in-tow, headed for Barstow, CA and a new home at the Western America Railroad Museum. WARM's collection also includes FP45 95 and numerous other Santa Fe artifacts.

Upon retirement, the 1460 had easily achieved the longest service life of any Santa Fe-rebuilt locomotive, some 38 years. The contemporary CF7's were far more numerous, but few stayed on the Santa Fe roster longer than 15 years. The 1460 was also the last repowered Baldwin active on a Class-1, though some repowered Baldwins continue to labor for shortlines and the military. The locomotive may have cost too much to produce, but it's hard to argue that the Santa Fe didn't get its money's worth out of the Beep.

Beep Shots
December 31, 1972, Houston, TX courtesy Ralph Back	October 21, 1973, Houston, TX courtesy Ralph Back	July 1975, Cleburne, TX courtesy John Sjolander	July 1979, Cleburne, TX courtesy GCM
ca.1986, Cleburne, TX Courtesy Robert Seale		July 1990, Argentine, Kansas City, KS	July 1992, Topeka, KS courtesy Mike Murray
May 1995, Argentine, Kansas City, KS	May 1995, Argentine, Kansas City, KS	May 1995, Argentine, Kansas City, KS	June 2001 Topeka, KS Courtesy Tony Kimmel
October 2002 Topeka, KS Courtesy John Mallory	January 14, 2008 Topeka, KS Courtesy Jeff Carlson
If you have a Beep shot you'd like to add, or additional information on this unique locomotive, please drop us a line.

References

1. Bassett, Gordon C., "Modeling the 'Beep,'" The Santa Fe Modeler, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1st Quarter 1991), pp.8-13.

2. Campbell, C. Langdon, "A 'Beep?'" Railroad Model Craftsman, June 1976, pp.33-35.

3. EuDaly, Kevin, Santa Fe 1992 Annual, Hyrail Productions, 1992.

4. Lustig, David, "The Cleburne Baldwin," Railfan & Railroad, Vol. 5, No. 10 (May 1985), p.48.

5. Pinkepank, Jerry, The Second Diesel Spotter's Guide, Milwaukee, WI: Kalmbach Publishing Co., 1973.

References
1. Bassett, Gordon C., "Modeling the 'Beep,'" The Santa Fe Modeler, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1st Quarter 1991), pp.8-13.
2. Campbell, C. Langdon, "A 'Beep?'" Railroad Model Craftsman, June 1976, pp.33-35.
3. EuDaly, Kevin, Santa Fe 1992 Annual, Hyrail Productions, 1992.
4. Lustig, David, "The Cleburne Baldwin," Railfan & Railroad, Vol. 5, No. 10 (May 1985), p.48.
5. Pinkepank, Jerry, The Second Diesel Spotter's Guide, Milwaukee, WI: Kalmbach Publishing Co., 1973.

Back to Santa Fe Subjects

The "Beep"

Santa Fe's SWBLW

History

Beep Shots

References