General Motors Electro-Motive Division (EMD)

This article draws on information paraphrased from the Wikipedia article mentioned in the reference section below.

In 1930 General Motors purchased the Electro-Motive Company wishing to complement their purchase of Winton Engine Corporation and enter the market in diesel-electric locomotives, primarily switchers and motorized rail cars. By 1935 they had opened a factory in McCook, Illinois (often referred to as LaGrange) to continue to produce their increasingly popular locomotive products.

In January of 1941 GM EMC spun off their railway locomotive efforts and created the self contained division at the McCook facility now known as the GM Electro-Motive Division (EMD).

In the post war years GM's production increased rapidly with the railways now converting steam to diesel. In 1949 EMD introduced the GP7 and stepped into their competitor's territory. Propelled by their popularity and reliability, GM entered the Canadian market with the creation of the Canadian subsidiary General Motors Diesel (GMD) and the opening of a new plant in London, Ontario which would produce standard EMD units as well as units customized to their Canadian customer's requirements.

In 1969 it was reorganized again to become Diesel Division of General Motors of Canada, Ltd. and started producing other diesel powered products such as buses and Terex vehicles.

In 1989 as the North American and global markets continued to shift, GM centralized all their locomotive production in London and changed the name from GMD to Diesel Division of General Motors of Canada and by 1991, ending production of complete locomotive units at their McCook EMD facility but allowing them to continue to produce engines and generators.

On April 4, 2005, in response to heavy competition and falling sales, GM sold the EMD subsidiary along with both the London, Ontario Diesel Division of General Motors of Canada and it's McCook, Illinois facility to Greenbriar Equity Group LLC and Berkshire Partners LLC who renamed EMD to Electro-Motive Diesel, Inc and the Canadian subsidiary to Electro-Motive Canada.

EMD changing ownership yet again in 2010 to Caterpillar, Inc's subsidiary Progress Rail Services who subsequently shut the London, Ontario facility down after opening a new plant in Mucie, Indiana.

References

EMD on Wikipedia