EL-C Rectifier

The EL-C was an electric locomotive built solely for the Virginian Railway by the General Electric Company. In total, 12 EL-C locomotives were built in 1956 & 1957 and were the first successful production locomotive to use ignitron rectifier technology. Ironically, this was the same technology used on the less-than-optimal EP-5 locomotive, but worked flawlessly on the EL-C’s due to the much larger ventilation area available in the EL-C. Although the EL-C proved to be a very successful design, no additional units were ever built due to the small number of railroads having electrification -- plus the advent of improved electric locomotive technology was right around the corner.

The Virginian Railway eventually sold the EL-C’s to the New Haven railroad in the 1960s and when merged into the Penn Central railroad in 1969 the EL-C’s were reclassified as E33 locomotives. Finally, Conrail repainted 10 E33s – all of which were retired in March 1981 when Conrail shut down its electric freight operations.

Lionel's version of the Virginian EL-C is an excellent model and captures the overall look-n-feel of the of its real life counterpart.

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