The EMD GP39 is a 4-axle diesel-electric locomotive built by

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 ...

between June 1969 and July 1970. The GP39 was a derivative of the

GP38 The EMD GP38 is a four-axle diesel-electric locomotive built by General Motors Electro-Motive Division between January 1966 and December 1971. The locomotive's prime mover was an EMD 645 16-cylinder engine that generated . The company built 70 ...

equipped with a

turbocharged In an internal combustion engine, a turbocharger (often called a turbo) is a forced induction device that is powered by the flow of exhaust gases. It uses this energy to compress the intake gas, forcing more air into the engine in order to pro ...

EMD 645E3 The EMD 645 is a family of diesel engines that was designed and manufactured by the Electro-Motive Division of General Motors. While the 645 series was intended primarily for locomotive, marine and stationary engine use, one 16-cylinder versi ...

12-

cylinder A cylinder (from ) has traditionally been a three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a prism with a circle as its base. A cylinder may also be defined as an infin ...

engine which generated . 23 examples of this locomotive model were built for

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

railroads. Burlington Northern Railway later rebuilt GP30 and GP35 locomotives that it classified as GP39s, but they were not built as such by GM/EMD.

Production History

Twenty of the original 23 were built for the

Chesapeake and Ohio Railway The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway was a Class I railroad formed in 1869 in Virginia from several smaller Virginia railroads begun in the 19th century. Led by industrialist Collis P. Huntington, it reached from Virginia's capital city of Richmond t ...

, while the other buyers were Kennecott Copper (2) and Atlanta & St. Andrews Bay (1).

GP39DC

Two examples of the GP39 were built as GP39DC locomotives in June 1970. These used a DC main

generator Generator may refer to: * Signal generator, electronic devices that generate repeating or non-repeating electronic signals * Electric generator, a device that converts mechanical energy to electrical energy. * Generator (circuit theory), an eleme ...

instead of the alternator used on the standard GP39 units, but were otherwise identical. 2 examples of this locomotive model were built for

Kennecott Copper Company Kennecott Utah Copper LLC (KUC), a division of Rio Tinto Group, is a mining, smelting, and refining company. Its corporate headquarters are located in South Jordan, Utah. Kennecott operates the Bingham Canyon Mine, one of the largest open-pit ...

as 1 and 2, later sold to

Copper Basin Railway The Copper Basin Railway is an Arizona short-line railroad that operates from a connection with the Union Pacific Railroad (UP) at Magma to Winkelman, in of length. The railroad also has a branch line that runs from Ray Junction to Ray, Arizo ...

as 401 and 402.

Successor

Though the GP39 was not a popular locomotive, EMD later revisited the idea of a turbocharged GP38 with its GP39-2 in 1974.

References

External links

* Sarberenyi, Robert.
EMD GP39 Original Owners
' GP39 B-B locomotives Diesel-electric locomotives of the United States Railway locomotives introduced in 1969 Standard gauge locomotives of the United States {{diesel-loco-stub