HO RTR SD40-2, B&O/Chessie #7608

HO RTR SD40-2, B&O/Chessie #7608 Overview

The Baltimore and Ohio (now under the unified corporate identity of Chessie System) ordered 20 SD40-2's. The units were delivered in Jan and Feb of 1977. These units were used all of the system, but were frequent visitors of helper pools in the Appalachian regions. All but one survived into the CSX era.

The SD40-2 was introduced in January 1972 as part of EMD's Dash 2 series, responding to competing products from GE and ALCO. Reliability and versatility of the 3,000-horsepower SD40-2 made it the best-selling model in EMD's history and the standard of the industry for several decades after its introduction. The SD40-2 was an improvement over the SD40, with modular electronic control systems like those of the experimental SD45X and DDA40X. The last SD40-2 delivered to a United States railroad was built in July 1984, with production continuing for railroads in Canada until 1988.