How Do You Identify Spotting Features Among Diesel Locomotives?
• Get a book. If you are entirely new to identifying diesel locomotives, pick up a good book (one of the best to get started is Brian Solomon’s “American Diesel Locomotive”) on the subject to get yourself familiar with the various locomotive manufacturers with the most common names being: the American Locomotive Company (Alco), Baldwin-Lima Locomotive Works(BLW), Fairbanks-Morse (F-M), General Motors’ Electro-Motive Division (EMD), and General Electric (GE). • Today, only the latter two companies still produce diesels for the railroading sector although at least a few models built by all of the companies listed above still operate in some capacity. In any event, for purposes of time this article will only highlight the general differing spotting features among different manufacturers and model types. Diesel locomotives have three basic types; switchers (usually found switching cars in yards), road switchers (typically used in everyday freight service they provide more power than switch
