The Electro-Motive Company (EMC) constructed a batch of fourteen 600-horsepower SW1 diesels for New York Central in early 1939. These were numbered NYC 600-613. Forty-eight years and four-months later, the former NYC 609 was still earning a living switching grain cars at the Agrex facility in Elm Creek, Nebraska, as seen on May 12, 2008. NYC 609 was later renumbered NYC 659, and then NYC 8457. It retained number 8457 when the NYC merged with the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1968, becoming Penn Central 8457. In 1976, the PC was one of the failing railroads that made up Conrail, and this little switcher became CR 8457. When this locomotive no longer fit into Conrail's motive power plans, it was sold to Agrex, where it worked until at least 2012.
