You are here: Home > Great Northern Section > BN 6592
BN 6592
BN 6592 was built by EMD as GN 326 in June of 1967. The Great Northern Railway ordered eight of the big 3600 HP passenger units of which the 326 was the first of the order. All were delivered in GN's Big Sky Blue and went into service on the Empire Builder along with the earlier SDP40's.
Here is a great photo of the GN 326 at Minneapolis, MN taken in 1969.
After the March 1970 BN merger the SDP45's were renumbered from GN 326-333 to BN 9856-9863 and continued to work BN's version of the Empire Builder. Here is a nice RailPictures photo of the BN 9856 leading the Empire builder in August 1970:
With the advent of Amtrak in May 1971 BN kept the SDP40's and SDP45's which then went into BN freight service and were eventually painted into BN's green freight scheme and were assigned to Havre, MT on the ex-GN.
During 1974 the 9856-9863 were renumbered again, this time to 6592-6599 and remained assigned to Havre, I first saw the BN 6592 at Interbay, WA 4-17-74 leading westbound #97 with units 6592/6635/6622/5754 (SDP45/F45/F45/U33C) By this time the steam heat boilers had been removed from the SDP45's and I notice on some of my photos they were marked simply as SD45 on the front side sill.
On 10-17-79 I photographed the 6592 leading eastbound train 2-88 with units 6592/6903/C&S 880 (SDP45/SD40-2/SD40) over the ex-GN's Stevens Pass route. This photo was near the town of Index, WA.
During the 1980's BN purged all of the ex-SDP45's from the roster with the 6592 being the first to go 7/84 when it was retired and traded in to EMD on an EMD GP50 order. Info says it was cut up for scrap.