Railworks America

Saw this recently, and thought it was cool enough to share. Though I can't find much else on this unit.

Thank you for sharing. Unusual scheme.

Found a larger/clearer image.

Also, was curious about this, so I ran a quick web search and found a discussion on railroad.net that yielded this information.

According to a discussion, Despatch Shops Inc. [DSI], was a subsidiary of New York Central. Merchants Despatch Transport originally operated a reefer leasing company, with the stock ownership of the company split across the Big Four, the Lake Shore, and the NYC (all part of the NYC empire). Later, the company was passed on to Penn Central and where various engines and cars (including cabooses) were created and sent out in to the system.

Another source provided the details regarding this particular engine:

Penn Central Despatch Shops Inc SW-1 No.15 at East Rochester, NY 10/05/67. This is EMD No.18173, was built in March of 1953, ex MKT No.15 and then PC No.8605.

Looks like this was previous scheme:

Probably should have a 'hack' with it (also built at DSI) while running the yards, no?

Well, thanks for that information! However, I don't think this is an SW1. All sources I've found show it as an SW8. Though all SWs really just looked the same up until the SW1000 lol.

Rivet counting at its finest..................

I'll give you that one. Though I can't really identify between most EMD switchers anyway.

Same unit in 1975. Sucks the green had to be removed, the standard PC paint scheme is extremely boring.

Guess when you take their other schemes into account this switcher one is probably the most unique.

The normal scheme, just bland black and white.

The "red worm" scheme, where half of the PC logo is red.

The inverted version of the second one, this time with the other half being an orange color. (Correction, apparently it is red, it's just extremely faded to where it looks like orange now).

And the final one (and most colorful) being the scheme the MTA decided to use on the FL9s the PC ran in the area.

That jade green on black D.S.I. livery is a pretty one. Really would have been cool if that would have been the standard PC livery (but then the PC would have gone bankrupt even quicker with all those extra cans of green paint they'd have had to buy! ) Thanks much everybody for sharing this and the history behind it.

Unoriginal wrote:I can't really identify between most EMD switchers anyway.

You can tell some of them apart by their hood designs:

The SW-1 has a shorter hood than the rest of them and a little box below the front grille. It also has bigger front windows because the hood tapers upwards a bit farther ahead of the cab like on the later SWs. https://www.american-rails.com/e292.html

The NW-1, -2, -5 have a longer hood like the later SW models, but share the bigger front cab windows and the horizontal hood top section before the cab with the SW-1.

The younger SW models then have the hood design like the PC unit pictured above.

I'm not at all sure how reliable these "rules" are to identify the switchers, or if one couldn't (for example) find an NW-2 with a later SW-type hood. There are probably also other identifying features but those hood design differences is all I know.

Cheers,
Michael