Mike,

Some internet searching for Kyle 2037 shows it as a former SP GP20E.? I see what I assume is a paper air filter box ahead of the dynamic brake bulge and fan.? Doesn't this indicate a rebuilding that eliminated the turbocharger?

I agree that seeing a running GP20 of any variety in 2014 is pretty good -- and especially given the relatively (for EMD) small number produced.

I had written an article in 1976 about the Penn Central GP20 fleet, all having come from New York Central's order for thirteen.? The turbochargers had been removed in a rebuilding program and the paper air filter box was part of that.? I have always been partial to the GP20, as a result of those NYC units, and it has therefore always been one of my favorite EMD models to see.

NYC ordered twenty-five RS-32s from Alco and those were used for only a very few short years on premium freight and Flexi-Van intermodal runs, often in a set of three and sometimes even four.? They were pitched off of the "hot" symbols, as were the small number of GP20s, by the rapid placement and delivery of orders for GP30s and then GP35s, as NYC modernized the locomotive fleet under Al Perlman.? Even that didn't last long as U25B, U28B, U30B, and GP40 orders began arriving and immediately went to the premium runs.? That was all occurring when I was too young to be a railfan, but it is what appears from lots of photographs and articles about NYC power practices in the 1960s.

The RS-32, of course, was even more rare than the GP20.? The NYC's fleet was the largest of only two -- SP having the ten that made up the only other fleet.? Those NYC RS-32s came to populate secondary runs, but then also came to dominate Penn Central regional operations in Upstate New York, being based for maintenance at DeWitt Shops in East Syracuse NY.? When I went to college in far northern New York, in the St. Lawrence River Valley, it was Alco heaven for the local operations... RS-32s everywhere, it seemed, on the locals on the St. Lawrence Division mainline and all of the branches.

When Conrail closed out the Alco era, it seems that C&NW picked up quite a few of the former NYC RS-32s.? The former NYC GP20s ended up on Conrail, based in Indiana, and then also went with the winds to a variety of shortlines.

Regards,

Dave Saums
Amesbury MA