EMD SW1200
model of 1200 hp American diesel switcher
An EMD SW1200 is a four-axle diesel switcher locomotive built by General Motors Electro-Motive Division between January 1954 and May 1966. Power is provided by an EMD 567C 12-cylinder engine, which generates 1,200 horsepower (890 kW). Additional SW1200 production was completed by General Motors Diesel in Ontario, Canada, between September 1955 and June 1964.
737 examples of this locomotive model were built for U.S. railroads, 287 were built for Canadian railroads, four were built for Brazilian railroads, 25 were built for a Chilean industrial firm, and three were built for the Panama Canal Railway.
Design and production
The SW1200 was the third model of 1,200 hp SW series switchers built by EMD. It was a successor to the SW7 and SW9. Compared to its direct predecessor, the SW9, the SW1200 differed in that it used the improved and more reliable 567C engine, compared to the SW9's 567B engine. Late SW1200s built in 1966 were instead built with the 567E 12-cylinder engine. Most of the locomotive's external features were unchanged from the SW9, making distinguishing between the two models difficult. The new "1200" model number was a reflection of EMD's change to a more horsepower-based model naming system at the time.
SW1200 production began in January 1954, immediately after SW9 production came to an end the previous month.
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This entry incorporates text from “EMD SW1200” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.