The GE E60 is a family of six-axle C-C electric locomotives made by GE Transportation Systems (GE) between 1972 and 1983. The E60s were produced in several variants for both freight and passenger use in the United States and Mexico. GE designed the locomotive for use on the Black Mesa and Lake Powell Railroad (BM&LP), a dedicated coal-hauling route in Arizona, which began operation in 1973. That same year GE adapted the design for high-speed passenger service on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor. The largest customer was Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México (NdeM), the state-owned railroad in Mexico, which bought 39 for a new electrification project in the early 1980s. The E60s were successful in the coal-hauling role. They ran on the BM&LP for decades and remain in use on several mining railroads in the Western United States. The passenger variants failed in their intended role. Problems with the truck design caused derailments above , rendering the locomotives unusable for high-speed service. By the end of the 1970s Amtrak abandoned the E60 in favor of EMD AEM-7 locomotives manufactured by Electro-Motive Division. In Mexico, the NdeM's project was delayed into the 1990s, then scrapped after three years of use. Most of the NdeM's electric locomotives never ran and were traded back to GE for diesels. Some were sold to various mining railroads. Design The Black Mesa and Lake Powell Railroad (BM&LP) was a new railroad built to transport coal from the Black Mesa Mine near Kayenta, Arizona to the Navajo Generating Station power plant at Page, Arizona. It was long and isolated from the national railroad network. The BM&LP was electrified at 50 kV 60 Hz AC, and was the first such electrification to use this voltage in the world. The railroad was intended to run as a conveyor belt, with trains cycling between the coal mine and the plant. To operate this conveyor belt, GE Transportation Systems (GE) designed the E60C, though it was suitable for general mainline freight operation. The heavy loads of coal on BM&LP drove GE's design choices on the E60C. GE chose a six-axle (C-C) design, with wheels instead of the standard wheels. This was necessary because of the locomotive's 85:21 gearing. With this gearing a maximum speed of was possible, although the standard operating speed on the BM&LP was . A transformer steps down the high-voltage AC which is then rectified with thyristor bridges to provide DC