The "Beep" (also referred to as the SWBLW) is an individual

switcher A switcher, shunter, yard pilot, switch engine, yard goat, or shifter is a small railroad locomotive used for manoeuvring railroad cars inside a rail yard in a process known as ''switching'' (US) or ''shunting'' (UK). Switchers are not inten ...

locomotive A locomotive or engine is a rail transport vehicle that provides the Power (physics), motive power for a train. If a locomotive is capable of carrying a payload, it is usually rather referred to as a multiple unit, Motor coach (rail), motor ...

built in 1970 by the

Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The railroad was chartered in February 1859 to serve the cities of Atchison, Kansas, Atchison and Top ...

at its

Cleburne, Texas Cleburne is a city in and the county seat of Johnson County, Texas, United States. As of the 2010 census, its population was 29,337. The city is named in honor of Patrick Cleburne, a Confederate general. Lake Pat Cleburne, the reservoir that pro ...

, workshops. Technically a rebuild, the Beep (a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsGeep", whose official designation was derived from "SWitcher, Baldwin Locomotive Works") originally entered service on the Santa Fe as a Baldwin Model VO-1000. Following its successful

CF7 The Santa Fe CF7 is an EMD F-unit railroad locomotive that has had its streamlined carbody removed and replaced with a custom-made, "general purpose" body in order to adapt the unit for switching duty. All of the conversions were performed by the ...

capital rebuilding program, the company hoped to determine if remanufacturing its aging, non-EMD end cab switchers by fitting them with new EMD prime movers was an economically viable proposition. The conversion procedure proved too costly and only the one unit was modified. In 2008-2009, this locomotive was retired and stored operational at Topeka, Kansas. In May 2009 the unit was donated to the

Western America Railroad Museum The Western America Railroad Museum is a railroad museum located in Barstow, California. The museum collects, preserves and shares the history of railroading in the Pacific Southwest. It is located on the east side of the Harvey House Railroad ...

Barstow, California Barstow is a city in San Bernardino County, California, in the Mojave Desert of Southern California. Located in the Inland Empire region of California, the population was 25,415 at the 2020 census. Barstow is an important crossroads for the I ...

History

In the early 1960s the

Reading Company The Reading Company ( ) was a Philadelphia-headquartered railroad that provided passenger and commercial rail transport in eastern Pennsylvania and neighboring states that operated from 1924 until its 1976 acquisition by Conrail. Commonly called ...

sent 14 of their VO-1000s to

General Motors Electro-Motive Division Progress Rail Locomotives, doing business as Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD), is an American manufacturer of diesel-electric locomotives, locomotive products and diesel engines for the rail industry. The company is owned by Caterpillar through its sub ...

to have them rebuilt to SW900 specifications. Unlike the "Beep", these locomotives retained most of their original carbodies. The units were subsequently given the designation VO-1000m.

Development

VO-1000 No. 67729 emerged from the

Baldwin Locomotive Works The Baldwin Locomotive Works (BLW) was an American manufacturer of railroad locomotives from 1825 to 1951. Originally located in Philadelphia, it moved to nearby Eddystone, Pennsylvania, in the early 20th century. The company was for decades t ...

Eddystone, Pennsylvania Eddystone is a borough in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. The population was 2,410 at the 2010 census. History The area at the mouth of Ridley Creek was first called "Tequirassy" by Native Americans. The land was owned by Olof Persson Stille, o ...

, facility in July 1943 dressed in the Santa Fe ''Zebra Stripe'' livery and bearing #2220. In the early 1960s the unit would take on the blue and yellow ''Billboard'' paint scheme with "SANTA FE" displayed in small yellow letters above the accent stripe, as was the standard for all

yard The yard (symbol: yd) is an English unit of length in both the British imperial and US customary systems of measurement equalling 3 feet or 36 inches. Since 1959 it has been by international agreement standardized as exactly 0.914 ...

switchers. It is these colors that #2220 displayed when it was selected as a test subject. Much as with the CF7 conversions, the unit was stripped down to its bare frame, and the long hood, power plant,

trucks A truck or lorry is a motor vehicle designed to transport cargo, carry specialized payloads, or perform other utilitarian work. Trucks vary greatly in size, power, and configuration, but the vast majority feature body-on-frame construction ...

, control gear, and electrical system scrapped; only the Baldwin cab remained. In a manner similar to the first CF7 modification, a sixteen-cylinder

EMD 567 The EMD 567 is a line of large medium-speed diesel engines built by Electro-Motive Diesel, General Motors' Electro-Motive Division. This engine, which succeeded Winton Motor Carriage Company, Winton's 201A, was used in EMD's locomotives from 193 ...

series

diesel engine The diesel engine, named after Rudolf Diesel, is an internal combustion engine in which ignition of the fuel is caused by the elevated temperature of the air in the cylinder due to mechanical compression; thus, the diesel engine is a so-call ...

was fitted to the Baldwin's cast steel frame, which required a considerable amount of modification. A new long hood was fabricated by the shops to a

GP7 The EMD GP7 is a four-axle ( B-B) diesel-electric locomotive built by General Motors Electro-Motive Division and General Motors Diesel between October 1949 and May 1954.Pinkepank, Jerry A. (1973) pp. 53 Power was provided by an EMD 567B 16 ...

pattern. The locomotive was configured in a B-B wheel arrangement and mounted atop two

Blomberg B The Blomberg B is a 2-axle bogie that was introduced by EMD in 1939 with the FT locomotive series; the original "B" version plus later "M" and "X" versions were quite successful and became standard equipment on a multitude of locomotive models. ...

two-axle

, with all axles powered. The unit received an advanced electrical system. The completed Beep rolled out of the Cleburne shops in December 1970 (with one of its original Baldwin builder's plates still affixed) sporting fresh blue and yellow paint, though now the words "Santa Fe" were applied in yellow in

Cooper Black Cooper Black is an ultra-bold serif typeface intended for display use that was designed by Oswald Bruce Cooper and released by the Barnhart Brothers & Spindler type foundry in 1922. The typeface was drawn as an extra-bold weight of Cooper's "Coo ...

font (logotype) along the sides below the accent stripe in the style otherwise reserved for

road switcher A road switcher is a type of railroad locomotive designed to both haul railcars in mainline service and shunt them in railroad yards. Both type and term are North American in origin, although similar types have been used elsewhere. A road s ...

s and other

main line Mainline, ''Main line'', or ''Main Line'' may refer to: Transportation Railway * Main line (railway), the principal artery of a railway system * Main line railway preservation, the practice of operating preserved trains on an operational railw ...

locomotives. It was also assigned #2450 (the first CF7 was given #2649, with successive numbers applied in descending order) and placed in service in south

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

In service

Train crews favored #2450 due to the superior riding qualities of its Blomberg trucks, which ran more smoothly than the original

AAR AAR or Aar may refer to: Geography * Aar, a river in Switzerland, tributary of the Rhine *Aar (Lahn), a tributary of Lahn river in Germany, descending from the Taunus mountains * Aar (Dill), a tributary of Dill river in Germany, also in the bas ...

Type-A switcher trucks. Being several tons heavier than a typical GP7 imparted a higher tractive effort, helpful when switching long cuts of cars. The Beep spent many years in lease service performing switching duties for the

Port Terminal Railroad Association The Port Terminal Railroad Association is an American terminal railroad that operates of track at the Port of Houston in Houston, Texas. It is an independent association comprising Port of Houston Authority, the Houston Belt & Terminal Railway, ...

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

. In August, 1974 the unit was re-designated as #1160 as part of a general locomotive renumbering scheme. It was again renumbered along with the Santa Fe's few remaining EMD switchers and assigned #1460 in January, 1977. The Beep was transferred to Cleburne as the shop switcher in the mid-1980s, where in 1985 it was given a number of external modifications. A cab

air conditioning Air conditioning, often abbreviated as A/C or AC, is the process of removing heat from an enclosed space to achieve a more comfortable interior environment (sometimes referred to as 'comfort cooling') and in some cases also strictly controlling ...

system was added, and the rear cab windows were modified from their original Baldwin pattern to a new three-pane configuration that accommodated the use of standard window glass sizes common to many EMD locomotives. The unit was given fresh paint (the ''Billboard'' colors were maintained) and placed back in service. SW900 #1453, Santa Fe's last "standard" EMD switcher, was retired in 1987, thus making #1460 the only end cab switcher on the roster. The Beep continued working at Cleburne until the shops were closed later that year. Since then, the unit has worked as a shop switcher at both the Argentine shops in

Kansas City The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more ...

and in

Topeka, Kansas Topeka ( ; Kansa language, Kansa: ; iow, Dópikˀe, script=Latn or ) is the Capital (political), capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the County seat, seat of Shawnee County, Kansas, Shawnee County. It is along the Kansas River in the ...

. The locomotive was equipped with remote control equipment (RCE) in the early 1990s so that it could be operated from a distance. After Santa Fe merged with the

Burlington Northern Railroad The Burlington Northern Railroad was a United States-based railroad company formed from a Mergers and acquisitions, merger of four major U.S. railroads. Burlington Northern operated between 1970 and 1996. Its historical lineage begins in the e ...

in 1995-1996 to form

BNSF Railway BNSF Railway is one of the largest freight railroads in North America. One of seven North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 35,000 employees, of track in 28 states, and nearly 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes that ...

, the Beep was one of only three blue and yellow units not affected by the new company's renumbering program. #1460's cab sides were affixed with a BNSF sublettering "patch" and retrofitted with a four-stack exhaust manifold.http://atsf.railfan.net/beep/sf1460ekimmel.jpg It was retired in 2008-2009, and later stored in Topeka, Kansas. In May 2009, the unit was donated to the

, where it remains on static display.

Footnote

Santa Fe had designated a handful of other non-EMD switcher locomotives for rebuilding around 1970 (including two

Fairbanks-Morse Fairbanks, Morse and Company was an American manufacturing company in the late 19th and early 20th century. Originally a weighing scale manufacturer, it later diversified into pumps, engines, windmills, coffee grinders, radios, farm tractors, fee ...

H-10-44s), but all of these units were subsequently scrapped when it was determined that the required modifications were not cost effective.

References

* Bassett, Gordon C. (1991). "Modeling the 'Beep'." ''The Santa Fe Modeler'' 14 (1) 8–14. * Includes background information and a photo gallery. *

External links