#8759

Southern Pacific GE U33C 8759 by Craig Garver Via Flickr: Southern Pacific GE U33C 8759 at El Centro, California, June 17, 1975. Photographer: W E Harmon. Scanned from a 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 negative owned by Digital Rail Artist. In the late 1970's, when I graduated high school, the Southern Pacific still had plenty of treasures to intrigue any railfan. SP 8759 was built in March, 1972, and was just three years old when William Harmon caught it at his home town. The Alco S6 was a fixture here, and would still be going strong for a few more years. El Centro was hardly a backwater. It was the nerve center for all those thousands of PFE loads originating in the rich Imperial Valley south of Niland on the Sunset Route. Plenty of road power made it to El Centro. The last of these big GE's had just been delivered a few months before this photo was taken, for a total of 212 units. Ten units had been cancelled on that last group, a foreshadowing of terrible things to come. Road failures would become so great that the fleet was sidelined in storage before the lease was even expired ... but that was a few years away, and these were still premier power.