Chicago’s Metra is one of the largest commuter railroads in the United States.
With several million riders every month, hundreds of trains run on a daily basis across the
system’s 11 lines.
Metra also has one of the oldest locomotive and rail car fleets in the country.
Most of the diesel locomotive hauled trains utilize F40PH locomotives that were built
as early as 1977.
These are well worn locomotives, working the same commuter trains for close to 45 years.
Recently, Metra has been looking to acquire newer locomotives so that the oldest and most
worn out members of the F40 fleet can be retired after a more than full career with the commuter
agency.
In 2018, Metra worked out a deal with EMD successor Progress Rail to purchase 21 F59PHI
locomotives that were coming to the end of their 20 year lease to Amtrak for Pacific
Surfliner and Cascades trains.
The locomotives were immediately placed into service at the end of 2018, following their
return from lease.
In order to get the units into operation as fast as possible, Metra opted in most cases
to quickly touch up the old paint schemes.
The F59s were also renumbered from Amtrak numbers 450 through 470 to Metra 73 through
93.
We will now travel to the Windy City to see several of these locomotives in action.
In addition to the F59PHIs, we will also see a few of Metra’s former GO Transit F59PH
locomotives.
Thanks for joining me for this look at Metra’s F59PHI locomotives.
If you’d like to see more Metra videos in the future, let me know in the comments section.
To receive notifications of my latest video uploads, subscribe to the channel and select
the “Receive all notifications” option by clicking on the bell.
As always, a big thank you to all my supporters on Patreon.
I’ll see you next Friday at 9 AM Pacific time for an all new railroad themed adventure
right here on the YouTube channel.
That’s it for now.
Until next time, I’m Mike Armstrong.
I’ll see you down the line!
Thanks for watching.