Equipment Information

Delaware Lackawanna & Western 3001 is the oldest internal-combustion locomotive at IRM and one of the oldest preserved in the country. It is a box-cab switcher, built for moving freight cars at low speed around the South Brooklyn Terminal yard in New York City. This type of box-cab was the first successful commercially built diesel locomotive design in America. Lackawanna 3001 was later sold to Ingersoll-Rand, which had manufactured the locomotive’s diesel engine, for use as a plant switcher in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. It was retired in the early 1980s.

FUN FACT: Lackawanna 3001 worked at a railroad yard in Brooklyn that moved freight cars on and off of marine barges for transportation across New York Harbor. At least once and possibly twice, this engine went off the pier and sank into the harbor! Nobody was killed and the locomotive was raised and repaired for further service.

Lackawanna 3001 Details

Builder: ALCO/GE/Ingersoll-Rand
Year Built: 1926
Model: 60-Ton
Horsepower: 300
Length: 34ft 10in
Width: 10ft
Height: 14ft 4in
Weight: 120000 lbs
Brakes: 14EL
Engine: Ingersoll-Rand
Motors: 4 GE HM840G
Trucks: ALCO
Description: Diesel-Electric Box Cab
Arrived: 1984
Condition: Complete / undergoing restoration / not operational

Read more about the history of this engine in Rail & Wire #260

Photo gallery

Lackawanna 3001 Ownership History

1926-1951 – Delaware Lackawanna & Western #3001
1951-1984 – Ingersoll-Rand #91
1984-present – Illinois Railway Museum, Union, IL

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