At the Terni railway yard, two old American-built “Truman” locomotives have been stored since 2011: they are the D143.3001 (ex USATC 1261, then Ne.120.039) and 3008 (ex USATC 1240, then Ne.120.018). These two examples served the FS for years as shunting machines and in their last period of activity they were assigned to the Fabriano depot and used for shunting freight trains in Terni, together with the 3003, currently demolished after a period of storage in Ancona. Although they have always been exposed to the elements, their aesthetic conditions are not so desperate; inside them there are also numerous interesting objects: a coffee maker, a woman's shoe, articles from sports newspapers from 2011, as if time had stopped inside them. The history of these machines began in 1941 when the Whitcomb Locomotive Works began production of a new series of shunting locomotives whose project took the name of 65DE: it was a heavy shunting locomotive (the so-called “65 ton switcher”) equipped with two 6-cylinder diesel engines with overhead valves and supercharged 280 hp (209 kW) built by Buda, an Illinois company under license from Lanova: they were coupled to a dynamo generating direct current that powered the electric motors placed on the bogies, while the electrical part was produced by Westinghouse; the whole thing was built on a sturdy two-bogie frame on which were mounted two front bodies and the central driving cabin with a walkway all around provided with handrails that allowed passage laterally and around the front bodies directly from the driving cabin. The locomotives were perfectly bidirectional and the two bogies, of a simplified type, had coil spring suspension. Of the 65DE, numerous types were produced: DE12, DE13, DE14, DE19, DE20, DE23, DE27 and DE42, divided between North and South America; but the story we are going to look at will be precisely of the 14 series. The 14 series had been ordered in 1941 as war locomotives by the British War Department (WD) and were designed to be used in the deserts of North Africa: built between 1942 and 1943, in total there were 4 orders for a total of 112 machines in 2 series (1200 and 1500) of which 7 were lost due to the war even before arriving in Africa. At the end of the fighting in Africa (where some also took part in the battle of El Alamein), 49 machines of the first 1200 series (which had two central windows in the cabin that looked onto the bonnet) were moved to Italy following the front, and here they remained at the end of the conflict; these are the units 1200-1208, 1232-1259 and 1260-1271, 12 of these locomotives between 1943 and 1944 were used for military trains in Palestine before arriving on the Peninsula. Remaining in Italy, they were classified by the FS first as Ne1200 and then as Ne120 (001-049) in 1953. In 1965, due to continuous problems with the heads of the now old Buda engines, the FS decided to modernize the engines: the two diesel engines were replaced by a single 12-cylinder, with a power of 420 kW, with natural fuel and direct injection, then the windows, bonnet and position of the headlights were changed. Throughout their career, shunting will always remain the center of their activities, even if, especially in the early periods, there will be no shortage of freight and also passenger services. To then conclude their career in the early 2000s. ENJOY THE VIEW! #railway #train #urbex