Built by General Motors in Ontario in November of 1983, this is one of seven built for use on British Columbia Railway's Tumbler Ridge subdivision. They were designated
GF6C locomotives. Each of the GF6Cs was 68 ft 10 in (20.98 m) in length and weighed 396,000 lb (180,000 kilograms). Each unit drew its power from 50 kilovolt lines and produced 6,000 horsepower.
The GF6C was an electric locomotive for freight duties built by General Motors Diesel in collaboration with ASEA of Sweden.
Seven of these locomotives were built in 1983 and 1984, for use on the BC Rail's electrified Tumbler Ridge subdivision.
Similar to EMD's GM6C testbed locomotive, the GF6C used a frame and running gear that was identical to that of EMD's popular SD40-2 diesel-electric locomotive, but had a wide cab and carbody similar to that of GMD's SD40-2F.
In 2004, the Paul D. Roy family purchased locomotive 6001 and donated it to the Prince George Railway and Forestry Museum in Prince George; the remaining six locomotives were scrapped. 6001 is currently preserved and in remarkable condition, and, according to the museum's curator and park manager, is still operable if provided with 50 kV of electricity.
From Wiki
The Tumbler Ridge subdivision ran to a pair of coal mines northeast of Prince George. The line had two long tunnels, meaning that electric power was the best choice for this line. The fact that the line was close to the WAC Bennett Dam meant that the power required was relatively close, cementing the decision to use electrics on the line. To our knowledge there was only one electrified line in BC, this one. The nearest other electrified line was a section of the Milwaukee Road running west from Harlowton, MT over the mountains through Idaho and into Washington.
The seven locomotives operated on the line until it was closed in 2000. 6001 found its way to Tacoma, WA after retirement and was nearly scrapped before being donated to the Central BC Railway and Forestry Museum in 2004, arriving here in May of that year.
THE 6001 ELECTRIC
Raw Energy
This No. 6001 locomotive is one of only seven 50-kilovolt electric locomotives built by General Motors in Ontario. They were built in the early 1980s for use on the Tumbler Ridge subdivision of the British Columbia Railway. The seven locomotives served the Bull Moose and Quintette coal mines exclusively for 19 years until 2000. Heavy and powerful enough to cross rugged mountains, the Electrics were also clean-running enough to be useful in the five and nine kilometer-long unventilated tunnels on this line. Prince George was the service centre and home base for these unique locomotives.
The No. 6001 sat unused for three years, and was then sold. It made its way to Tacoma, Washington where it was slated to be scrapped. Thanks to a generous donation, the locomotive was purchased, brought back to Canada and arrived at the Museum in May 2004.
Tumbler Ridge Subdivision
The Tumbler Ridge Subdivision, an 82-mile (132 km) electrified branch line, opened in 1983 to the Quintette and Bullmoose mines, two coal mines northeast of Prince George that produced coal for Japan. It has the lowest crossing of the Rocky Mountains by a railway, at 3,815 feet (1,163 m). There are two large tunnels under the mountains: The Table Tunnel, 5.6 miles (9.0 km) long, and the Wolverine Tunnel, 3.7 miles (6 km) long. Electrified owing to the long tunnels and close proximity to the W. A. C. Bennett Dam and transmission lines, it was one of the few electrified freight lines in North America. Although initially profitable, the traffic on the line was never as high as initially predicted, and by the 1990s was under one train per day. The railway had incurred much debt building the branch line, and the expensive, unprofitable operations on the branch line could not help to repay that debt.
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