Cargos Shipped Through the Port of Erie: Locomotives

One of the less frequent cargos shipped through the port of Erie are locomotives built by GE Transportation.

GE Transportation, long Erie County's largest employer, manufactures diesel locomotives for the domestic and foreign markets. Although most of the locomotives it manufactures are for the domestic market, a number of them are for international customers. This poses a problem as far as shipping the units is concerned, as there is obviously no rail link between the United States and Europe, Asia, Australia or South America.

Therefore, locomotives built for international buyers have to be shipped via water. Although most of them are shipped via coastal ports, the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959 gave GE another option -- the port of Erie.

Over the years GE has infrequently used the port to ship locomotives via foreign-flagged heavy-lift ships. One of the first shipments was in November 1963, when the BELKARIN loaded locomotives for Thailand.

On June 1, 1967, the BELEVELYN arrived in Erie and loaded 14 locomotives. Twelve of these were bound for Honduras and two for Panama. Fifteen years later, on November 29, 1982, the American-registered ASHLEY LYKES loaded locomotives for Tunisia.

The past decade has seen four shipments of new locomotives from GE depart through the port of Erie. In October, 1997, the PROJECT ARABIA arrived in port to load locomotives GE was shipping to Brazil. A year later, the first of three shipments to the Quebec, North Shore & Labrador Railroad, an iron-ore railroad linking Port Cartier, Quebec, with iron ore mines north of there, departed aboard the FAIRLOAD. These Dash 9-44CW locomotives were at the time GE's most modern.

Five years later, the STELLAPRIMA loaded 12 GE AC4400CW locomotives for the same raiload. The Quebec, North Shore & Labrador railroad has no connection to another railroad, which is why the units are shipped by ship to Port Cartier, which is on the St. Lawrence River.

The most recent shipment that GE used the port of Erie for occured on June 16, 2006, when the STELLANOVA arrived in Erie to load 6 AC4400CWs for Port Cartier. Hopefully, GE will continue to use the port of Erie for shipments.

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STELLANOVA loads locomotives (to the left of the photo, under tarps) at the Mountfort Terminal on June 16, 2006.