After bringing a Salt Lake City to Provo manifest into the yard, UP's one and only high hood SD24 takes a break in the joint UP-Utah Railway car shop. The UP 448 was built as EMD demonstrator 5579 in July 1958 and sold to the UP on Aug. 1, 1961. The UP retired it by Oct. 1980 and sold it to Precision National Corp. on March 27, 1981. Later it was sold to ICG and rebuilt as SD20 2026 by April 1982. It would be stored unserviceable by August 1996 and returned to service as Chicago Central & Pacific in February 1997. By May 1997 it was sold to National Railway Equipment and leased as NREX 2026 to IMRL from May 1997 to December 1999. After that, it worked on Pacific Harbor Lines out of Long Beach, California as PHL 2026. A colorful history for an interesting, pioneer EMD that set the stage for the successful SD40 and SD40-2 models. A big thank you to Don Strack for the history on this unique SD24.
