Chicago’s Metra has taken delivery of all 15 SD70-MACH locomotives that it ordered from Progress Rail in 2019.
The commuter railroad made the announcement in the fourth-quarter 2024 edition of its MyMetra magazine for riders.
The Metra Board in 2019 approved a $70.9 million contract for 15 remanufactured and repurposed diesel-electric locomotives to modernize the Chicago railroad’s aging fleet. The contract included options for up to 27 additional units.
The program involved rebuilding six-axle AC-traction Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD) SD70-MAC freight locomotives, 1,109 of which were built by EMD between 1993 and 2004. The remanufactured units—designated SD70-MACH—not only offer AC traction motors, rather than the DC traction motors found in Metra’s older locomotives, but also “meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s Tier 3 emissions standards,” Metra reported in its magazine. The first SD70-MACH was unveiled in October 2022.
“Customers who ride the Milwaukee District North and West lines have no doubt seen Metra’s new SD70-MACH locomotives,” the railroad said. “With their six axles, longer length and bright blue color scheme, they’re hard to miss. And while they’re notable for what you can see, they’re also notable for what you can’t—and that is the fact that the newly remanufactured locomotives are the cleanest-burning locomotives in our fleet.”
According to Metra, because the locomotives have “lived up to their promise of being more reliable and more environmentally friendly, we’ve exercised one of our options to buy nine more (we could end up buying another 18 after that, for a total of 42).” The railroad noted that replacing 42 of its current locomotives that are rated Tier 0+ with 42 Tier 3 locomotives would eliminate 61 tons of nitrous oxide emissions annually—the equivalent to taking 6,600 cars off the road.
In addition to the SD70-MACHs, Metra also has 200 new multilevel cars on the way (see video above).
The railroad in spring 2021 awarded a $775.4 million contract to Alstom, which is building the cars in upstate New York. “Under the current schedule, the cars will be delivered between 2026 and 2029,” Metra reported in its latest magazine. “The contract includes options for up to 500 cars. The new multilevel cars will be more comfortable, accessible, reliable and safe than the outdated gallery [bilevel] cars they will replace. The new cars will have two entrances on each side with doors nearly level to the platform, thereby requiring only one step to enter instead of multiple steps on the old gallery cars. These changes will improve passenger flow, increase safety and reduce time spent boarding and deboarding at each station. The ADA-accessible cars will also have video screens, bike racks, storage for bags, charging outlets, cupholders, armrests and more.”
Separately, Metra in 2022 awarded Progress Rail a $34.6 million contract to convert up to six of its oldest diesel-electric locomotives to zero-emission battery power. More recently, the commuter railroad debuted a specially painted locomotive to honor all veterans and active-duty service members and reservists on Veterans Day.
