Ultimate Meatball to Amtrak: Please Wash Me!

Ultimate Meatball to Amtrak: Please Wash Me!

The Swedish designed (hence the “Meatball” moniker) American built AEM-7 high speed electric locomotive was, since her introduction in the early 1980s, the backbone of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor Service.

The fleet replaced the venerable Pennsylvania Railroad designed GG1 (*) in providing reliable high-speed service between Washington and New York, and later, on to Boston. Unassuming in appearance (another nickname was “Toaster,” both for her boxy shape and the hot arrays of resistor grids on her roof), and certainly without the distinctive lines of the proud “G,” she was, nonetheless, a potent little power pack, feeling very much at home pulling Amfleet consists at 125 miles per hour on the corridor, or long-distance trains at up to 110 mph.

No. 953 was the last AEM-7 built for Amtrak, part of a second order of "Meatballs" in 1987. She and her sisters are part of a success story for high-speed rail in the northeastern United States – in fact they made it happen, after the GG1s were retired. They won’t be able to lay claim to the same service longevity as the G’s, some of which ran for close to 50 years, as the AEM-7s are being replaced by the new ACS-64 "Cities Sprinter" electric locomotives, as they arrive from Siemens, but three-plus decades in demanding service is not too shabby a record…

Ah, but speaking of shabby, Ultimate Meatball 953, on this late winter day in 2011, looks like she might be feeling a bit that way and might appreciate a trip through the warm, soapy scrubby rollers over at the LocoWash, as she soldiers on at the head of a southbound Northeast Corridor train at Baltimore’s Pennsylvania Station. The sleek bi-level coaches on the next track belong to Maryland MTA’s MARC Penn Line, providing commuter train service to intermediate points between Washington and Baltimore and onward to communities in Northern Maryland.

Hail, you mighty little Meatball.

This image is available in archival metallic gallery prints, and as a custom printed photo note Card.

©2014 Steve Ember