For decades, General Motors was king of the highway and queen of the rails. In addition to mass-producing buses, cars and trucks, the automaker was once the largest locomotive builder in the world. At a massive factory just west of Chicago, GM’s Electro-Motive Division (EMD) assembled powerful machines that helped transition American railroads from steam to diesel.
EMD, which still exists today as Progress Rail Services Corp., a division of Caterpillar Inc., recently celebrated its centennial. The company traces its roots to Cleveland, where the Electro-Motive Engineering Corp. was established in 1922 to design gasoline engine powered, electric-motor driven railcars for light-duty passenger service.