Illinois Central(Gulf) extended the life of many steam and diesel engines by rebuilding them at Paducah, including for Conrail and Rock Island in the 1970s. My understanding is that the rebuild market has disappeared, and thus Paducah joins Silvis and the old MK Boise shops as closed.
https://www.facebook.com/20531316728/po ... 990506729/
"Illinois Central Railroad Scrapbook And Occasionally Other Railroads
1h
It appears that locomotive rebuilding has permanently come to an end at the Paducah, KY, locomotive shops....
History of the shops in a (big) nutshell: The Paducah locomotive shops were opened in 1927 by the Illinois Central Railroad and for decades were the IC's largest locomotive shops. Illinois Central became Illinois Central Gulf in 1972 after merging with GM&O. Then in August, 1986, the shops were sold to VMV Enterprises, owned by local business leaders Jim Smith and David Reed (at the same time, Smith and Reed bought the Illinois Central Gulf line from Louisville south through Mayfield to Paducah, which became the Paducah and Louisville Railway).
VMV was sold in 1994 to the investment firm of Dimeling, Schreiber & Park, out of Philadelphia. The company began struggling financially and in 2002 VMV filed for bankruptcy. VMV was sold later that year to National Railway Equipment, headquartered in Mount Vernon, IL. NRE had purchased the former Precision National Corp. facility in Mount Vernon a few years previously, and added Chrome Crankshaft, which operated (among other facilities) the ex-Rock Island shops in Silvis, IL.
NRE filed for bankruptcy on April 21, 2026. Court documents indicate that NRE had previously sold the Paducah property and was leasing it back. When NRE filed for bankruptcy, the company declared its intent to shut down the Paducah facility, but wouldn't say when. After some legal back-and-forth with its landlord, NRE agreed to vacate the Paducah property by August 27. That deadline was met - just barely. In mid-August most of the locomotives stored behind the shops were gathered up and shipped to their new owner in Ohio, Larry's Truck and Electric (LTEX), where they will likely be scrapped. On August 27 the rest of the equipment inside the shops was removed.
As for the buildings themselves, they've been resold. The new owners will use the facilities to fabricate steel parts for the mega-data center (yeah, rah rah) that will be built west of Paducah on site of the old uranium enrichment site.
Around 1976-77 locomotives rebuilt at Paducah began receiving plates like this one. It measures approximately 15" x 4 1/4" and about 1/15" thick and stamped from steel. The plates were attached to the frame under the cab. After VMV took over the shops, plates of the same size were applied to rebuilt locomotives, bearing the trademark Paducahbilt. The VMV plates were stamped from aluminum.
Ironically, the last day of business for NRE at Paducah (Aug. 27, 2026) came 40 years and one day after the Paducah shops were spun off to form VMV (Aug. 26, 1986). And it's just 4 days from Sept. 1, the anniversary when the shops first opened (in 1927).
Cliff Downey photo."

I wonder how KLW and Brookville are doing.

Wasn't NRE big-time into gensets? Lord only knows that market collapsed.

It got bad when Corman bought Railpower in 2009 for the Genset business. I'll never forget finding one of them parked dead on disconnected track in Red Hill, SC beside US 501. #1701 - Converted to an R. J. Corman billboard on display. And even that is gone now. Only the display track at E. Fox Quarry Rd. still shows on Google Earth, removed sometime after 2022. Railpower closed in 2020.

Here's an interesting discussion of those units by Western Rail, Inc., a boutique rebuilder in Spokane WA. I believe the unit they started with was an NRE three genset unit in the UP/UPY 2700 series: https://www.facebook.com/20531316728/po ... 990506729/

"Western Rail, Inc.
July 15

Starting our next Cummins QSK50 Tier 4, 2,400 HP locomotive build!
We are now taking three-engine GenSets that have been proven as total failures and re-rebuilding them into a proven, reliable single-engine locomotive. This is the first of three locomotives we'll be building for this customer.
We're excited to give these failed GenSets a second life by transforming them into dependable single-engine locomotives that can continue serving the rail industry for years to come.

We know they're not EMDs—and believe us, we love EMDs too! But the reality is that the future of the locomotive industry is being shaped by increasingly stringent emissions regulations. These Tier 4 locomotives are an important part of that future, and we're proud to be part of the solution."

I wonder how "dependable" these "single engine" units will be. Knoxville Locomotive Works is doing similar "rebuilds of rebuilds" (Western was first with the idea), I think the KLW units for Napa Valley started as BNSF gensets. They aren't using a 900 RPM high-displacement engine like Wabtec or EMD (which last for decades) but essentially a high-revving truck engine (which don't last for decades). There were a few lines that handle a few cars at a time at low speeds on branch lines who were OK with gensets, until they stopped working, and they could be OK with a conversion to a single Cummins truck engine. But as I recall, the problem/complaint these gensets were intended to remedy was Class Is letting their road units idle at terminals, and the haze of diesel exhaust that hovered over that area, and gensets would never fix that. Bottom photo Tim Farrell, on its way west from Larry's I believe.

A lot of this boutique building is generated by emissions reductions grants, where the primary requirement of measurable emissions overrules everything else. I once asked about the gen-sets here and received a private assessment from an operator that indicated availability and reliability were suspect-in somewhat colorful terms.

I'd love to know about the benefits of using the GE 6cyl GEVO, as CSX is using/did use in their SD40-2 rebuilds and Cummins/Cat/MTU engines.

I had the pleasure of working there in 2005-2006. I answered a newspaper ad for welders wanted and was hired as an electrician (go figure). One other electrician and I helped build six brand new SDL-60's for Saudi Arabia (which were later damaged by a hurricane while awaiting shipment), then a batch of SD70M-2's for NS, followed by various contract work jobs such as 92-day and Annual work on UP SD90's (changing alternator bearings and b/o diodes was interesting). We did all of the "new" work in the "Tank Shed" behind the old erecting hall. That building got its name for the place where steam locomotive tenders were built. There were days when we got to explore the entire facility. There was still a lot of evidence of the steam-era infrastructure to see back then. Somewhere I still have a copy of a very large drawing of the entire works, including the roundhouse and yard, that was kept in one of the offices. I recall the keeper of the drawings was a kindly older gentleman that loved talking about the place's history.

All in all it was a very neat place to work in, even if the snow blew in under the double wood doors in the winter, it rained inside whenever it rained outside (EMD didn't take to their new locomotives getting wet like that and forced NRE to finally fix the roof), and of course there was the heat and humidity in the summer.

So much history in those bricks. I hope the buildings are preserved in some fashion.

Brian Wise

Does anyone know what became of the red RS1 that had been out back for a few decades?