After a long winter, the Port of Erie is, once again, a busy place. Today, locomotives built at the GE plant in Lawrence Park, were being loaded on a ship. The locomotives will be a frequent sight at the port all summer long, and perhaps into next year.

 

Ten locomotives were lifted onto the ship today.  The locomotives will be  bound for Mozambique, on the eastern side of Africa.   It will take until Wednesday afternoon to get the ten locomotives, and the equipment that goes with them, fully loaded onto the ship.  Then, it will take 8 to 10 weeks to get from Erie to the other side of Africa.


A total of 40 locomotives will be shipped from the Port of Erie to Africa.  GE plans to ship them ten at a time, now through September.

The locomotive shipments are just part of a busy season that's expected at the port.


"This should be a good year for us.   The GE locomotives, of course, is a great project.   We have some heavy transformers coming in.   In fact, three will be coming in next weekend. They will go about 200 tons each.   So we're hoping for the continuing of the operation of the Port of Erie to increase," said Tod Eagleton, Dock Operations Manager.


The locomotives will be used by a Brazilian company at a coal mining operation in Africa.  That company is in negotiations with GE to purchase 37 more locomotives that would be shipped out next year.