In 1939, the Electro-Motive Division of General Motors introduced the FT, the first road freight diesel locomotive.
The success of the FT and the post-war successors, the F2 and F3, made EMD the largest locomotive builder by
1949. But in early 1949, there was a threat to EMD’s lead. The other builders were all offering a new type of locomotive,
the road-switcher. As the name implies this was a locomotive that combined the features of a switch engine with
those of a road freight engine.
