AZL - 63508-1 - Locomotive, Diesel, GE P42 Genesis - Amtrak - 66

Specific Item Information: Well over a year in advance of Amtrak’s 40th Anniversary, a core team of employees was formed to develop plans for celebrating 40 years of being America’s Railroad. One of the ideas was to paint current locomotives into each of the previous paint schemes Amtrak has used over the years. Blair Slaughter of Industrial Design and Matt Donnelly of the Marketing and Product Development Department collaborated to adapt the paint schemes to the current P42 locomotive car body.

There are four previous paint schemes, known as phases, and only one had ever been applied to the P42 car body previously. The goal was to keep the schemes as true to their original form, while fitting the physical design of the current locomotives so that they looked right—a task that resulted in as many as seven unique options per scheme! The favorite 2D concept for each scheme was chosen, and Matt painted scale models of the Phase I and II schemes to test the plans. More fine tuning was done after seeing the scale models before a finalized plan was made for each scheme.

Blair drew paint diagrams of the finalized plans to scale using CAD, specifying every last detail so that the employees at the Beech Grove Maintenance Facility could make the plans a reality. The paint and decal team at Beech Grove did a beautiful job of applying these schemes to locomotives already scheduled to receive paint jobs. All four locomotives are complete and will be used throughout the system, so be sure to look out for one of our Heritage units the next time you ride Amtrak!

Prototype History: General Electric Genesis is a series of passenger locomotives produced by GE Transportation Systems, a subsidiary of General Electric. Between 1992 and 2001, a total of 321 units were built for Amtrak, Metro-North, and Via Rail.

The Genesis series of locomotives was designed by General Electric in response to a specification published by Amtrak and ultimately selected over a competing design presented by GM EMD. The Genesis series are unique among current North American diesel-electric locomotives because of their low height. This height restriction allowed the locomotive to travel easily through low-profile tunnels in the Northeast Corridor. The Genesis series is lower than even the previous-generation F40PH by 14 inches (356 mm), and is the only Amtrak diesel locomotive that meets the clearance or loading gauge requirements on every Amtrak route.

From Wikipedia

Road Name History: The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak, is a passenger railroad service that provides medium- and long-distance intercity service in the contiguous United States. Founded in 1971 through the government-sponsored consolidation of most of the remaining U.S. passenger rail companies, it is partially government-funded yet operated and managed as a for-profit corporation.

Amtrak operates more than 300 trains each day on 21,300 miles (34,000 km) of track with select segments having civil operating speeds of 150 mph (240 km/h) and connecting more than 500 destinations in 46 states in addition to three Canadian provinces. In fiscal year 2015, Amtrak served 30.8 million passengers and had $2.185 billion in revenue, while employing more than 20,000 people. Nearly two-thirds of passengers come from the 10 largest metropolitan areas; 83% of passengers travel on routes shorter than 400 miles. Its headquarters is at Union Station in Washington, D.C.

The name "Amtrak" is a portmanteau of the words "America" and "trak", the latter itself a sensational spelling of "track".

Read more on Wikipedia.

Brand/Importer Information: AZL is the leader in North American Z scale locomotives and rolling stock. Since 2000, AZL has released a vast variety of freight, passenger and locomotives. AZL continues to push the boundaries of Z scale with amazing details and incredible performance. No matter if you are looking to run steam, or the most modern diesels, AZL has something for you.