Great Northern Y-1
The Great Northern Railway's class Y-1 comprised eight electric locomotives with AAR 1-C+C-1 wheel arrangements. The locomotives were used on the electrified portion of the railroad, from Wenatchee, Washington to Skykomish, Washington, including the Cascade Tunnel.
The locomotives were built at Schenectady, New York, with car bodies manufactured by American Locomotive Company and electrical components supplied by General Electric. They used motor-generator sets to rectify the alternating current line voltage into direct current for their traction motors.
The GN numbered the units 5010–5017 and classified them Y-1 being painted in the "Pullman Green" paint scheme. After being involved in a wreck at Tonga, Washington in July 1945, the 5011 was rebuilt with a streamlined appearance using cabs from an EMD FT; the GN reclassified it as Y-1a.
All Y-1 units were later repainted into the GN Empire Builder scheme and were equipped with busbars located where the headlights and bells used to be to connect the 11kV AC current between units when doing multiple-unit operation. Crews affectionately gave these apparatuses the nickname "stingers" due to the shape and placement of them. This relocated the headlight to the far front ends of the locomotive and the bell on each end was relocated under the cab on the engineers side.
In 1956, the GN dieselized operations through the Cascade Tunnel. The electrical system was decommissioned, and the Y-1 locomotives were sold to the Pennsylvania Railroad, who classified them as FF2. GN 5011 was broken up for spares, and the remaining seven locomotives were overhauled and converted to PRR standards and then placed into service, being assigned numbers 1–7 on the PRR. They lasted a few more years on the PRR, and were all scrapped between 1957 and 1966.