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CSX HLS1 - Huntington's Hidden Gem

"If you were to go to Huntington, and check the locomotive shops where various old locomotives from CSX either sit in the baking sun or are awaiting to be rebuilt, you would probably encounter a peculiar locomotive. It doesn't have a 4-digit number, but instead the text "HLS1" on the side. Little do you know its a hidden gem on CSX's roster"

So i'm doing a small range of timelines for units that are rather unique on America's rail network, and for now, here is a hidden gem on CSX's roster, the Huntington HLS1.

HLS1 originally started off with an uneventful life as Clinchfield 3611, an EMD SD45-2 built in November 1972 for use on the Clinchfield coal trains across the Appalachians. Following the Clinchfield being accquired by Seaboard System in 1983, the unit was renumbered into 8969 between 1985 and 1986. The new number would last into the quick merger into CSX in 1986 with a simple "CSXT" patch. Following the CSX merger, 8969 had a normal career until being stored between the 1990s.

During that time, CSX was looking for a load-testing unit for there Huntington Shops, and looked towards the clapped-out SD45-2, and eventually rebuilt and reclassified as "HLS1" (for Huntington Shops). HLS1's purpose was for testing out engines that had gotten repairs on mainline units that came into the shops, often running the unit in Notch 8 and letting the engine pull the unit to see how they perform. HLS1 still is on CSX's roster, but whether its still used as a load-test best is still uncertain, as not much evidence is shown. It still shows that a generic workhorse of its time could get a "unique" purpose in its later life.


CREDITS:

NateOutofContext - SD45-2 model