SD45S BRIEFLY RETURN TO BIG SKY COUNTRY A Flared Finale? BY JUSTIN FRANZ/PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR T
HE IMAGES STARTED TO HIT the Inter- net in the spring of 2014 — photos of bits and pieces of Montana Rail
Link SD45-2s being cut up and shipped off to scrap yards across the west. With each passing week, it seemed another classic Electro-Motive Division product moved down the dead line to its doom. It appeared the end had finally come for one of the last great fleets of 16-cylinder SD45s in North America. Or so we thought. The demise of MRL’s fleet of flared
EMDs was temporarily halted by an un- likely partner — BNSF Railway. With traffic on the rise, the power-hungry Class I turned to Montana’s regional railroad for spare locomotives, much like it has done during the previous two de-
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RAILFAN.COM
cades, and by the summer of 2014, a doz- en SD45-2s were working across Mon- tana in a throwback to a time when the classic locomotives ruled the rails. The SD45 was first introduced in
1965 and helped bring about the era of high-horsepower, six-axle diesel locomo- tives. The engines featured what would become the standard EMD cab and a flared long hood that gave the SD45 an almost muscular appearance. Fifty years after the locomotives first appeared (and more than 40 years after the successor, the SD45-2, came on the scene) they have become a fan favorite despite the fact that they led to the quick demise of some first generation diesels. Part of the locomotive’s popularity may stem from their throaty sound or the simple fact
that in the era of ubiquitous wide-cab General Electrics, the EMD SD45s and SD45-2s simply stand out in the contem- porary rail landscape. In 1989 MRL purchased 16 SD45s and SD45-2s for use in helper service and its ML and LM road freights that run be- tween Missoula and Laurel, Mont., along with a sizable roster of SD40-2XRs. A few years later, as more railroads be- gan to retire their older six axle loco- motives, MRL’s fleet continued to grow with orphaned units from such varied roads as the Southern Pacific, Norfolk & Western, Erie Lackawanna, Burlington Northern, Seaboard Coast Line, Frisco, Pennsylvania, and Santa Fe. By 1998 the railroad owned more than six dozen SD45s and SD45-2s, as well as
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