Two rare, narrow-gauge diesel locomotives, one of them more than a half-century old, have come to Tacoma to get a new lease on life.

The locomotives, built by General Electric in its Erie, Pa., plant in 1954 and 1966, for the Alaska-based White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad, are the first part of what could be a years-long project for Tacoma Tideflats rail maintenance firm Coast Engine and Equipment Co.

The two locomotives were lifted by a huge crane from a barge at Tacoma’s American Construction Co. on the Hylebos Waterway at midday Tuesday. They will be transferred to Coast Engine’s plant using massive multiwheeled trailers either tonight or Friday night depending on traffic conditions and permissions needed from the Port of Tacoma and the state Department of Transportation.

The locomotives can’t move to Coast Engine under their own power because they’re designed to work on narrow-gauge track, which has 3 feet between the rails. Conventional gauge is 4 feet 81/2 inches between the rails.

At the locomotive overhaul company, the locomotives will be lifted off their narrow-gauge trucks (a train term for the wheel assembly) and temporarily fitted with broader-gauge trucks so they can be moved around the plant, said Coast Engine President Dave Swanson.

At Coast Engine over the next five months, the locomotives will be completely rebuilt – acquiring modern engines and alternators, rebuilt and upgraded electric traction motors and microprocessor-based control systems. The locomotive bodies will get a new coat of White Pass & Yukon’s classic yellow and green paint.

The transformation will upgrade both engines to 1,400 horsepower. The older of the two engines, No. 90, built in 1954, has a 930-horsepower engine now. The second, No. 98, built in 1966, has a 990-horsepower engine.

As in most modern diesel-electric locomotives, the diesel engines power a generator or alternator that supplies electric motors that drive the engines’ wheels.

Gary Danielson, president of White Pass & Yukon, said the new engines will not only be more powerful – two of the rebuilt locomotives will be able to handle a train that required three of the original locomotives – they’ll be 30 percent more fuel efficient and reduce exhaust emissions by 80 percent and visual emissions by 100 percent.

For Coast Engine, the White Pass &Yukon job will be the first generated from a new alliance with the Cummins Inc. Cummins will supply the 1,400-horsepower engines to repower the historic locomotives.

If the rebuilds are successful – and Coast Engine’s Swanson believes they will – White Pass & Yukon will eventually repower all 11 of vintage shovel-nosed GE’s that power its passenger trains on three-hour tourist trips up its mountainous route from tidewater in Skagway, Alaska, to White Pass Summit in British Columbia.

White Pass & Yukon was built at the turn of the century by British investors to supply gold miners who migrated to the Yukon to seek gold.

The railroad is now the nation’s busiest tourist rail line despite its remote location at the east end of the Lynn Canal in Alaska. Last summer, the railroad set a record carrying 7,000 passengers in a single day.

Those passengers largely come from cruise ships that call at the Alaska port.

Coast Engine gained its reputation with White Pass & Yukon last year by rebuilding a locomotive that had been damaged in a work train accident.

Coast Engine, which began its business by rebuilding big marine diesel engines, now operates mostly in the railroad business, repairing and overhauling big diesels and rail cars.

As part of Coast Engine alliance with Cummins, the company is branching out into the business of re-equipping less exotic older locomotives with new environmentally compliant power plants.

The company is taking delivery soon from Cummins of the first so-called “Tier 3” compliant locomotive engine in the U.S. That engine will not only meet existing “Tier 2” Environmental Protection Agency standards but also the coming “Tier 3” rules.

The company plans to build several demonstrator locomotives using the Cummins power plants for demonstration to U.S. and Canadian railroads. Those re-equipped locomotives will first go to work on Montana Rail Link, a sister company of Coast Engine, and then will be leased out to railroads around the country.

The Cummins power plants, which are built in England, will be offered in several versions from 2,000 to 3,100 horsepower.

John Gillie: 253-597-8663

blogs.thenewstribune.com/business