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Pat:
To answer your second question first, no, you wouldn’t have needed the winterization hatch in Louisiana or south Texas. So the GP7s ordered for I-GN and StLB&M did not have them.
If you’ll look on the roof of one of these Gulf Coast Lines geeps, you’ll see four fans. The blank space on the roof between the exhaust stacks is where the dynamic brake would be, if MoPac had needed it. So, on the series of geeps bought for MP proper, on the roof to the rear of the unit you’ll see one exposed fan housing, and ahead of it a box maybe a foot high, almost as wide as the hood and twice as long as it is wide. This is the winterization hatch. There’s a square grille covering the fan (the third fan back from the cab) which, in warm weather, allows exhaust air from the fan to pass through. In cold weather this box can be changed over, through a set of louvers, so that the square grill is partially blocked off and some of the warm air is redirected into the hood to keep the guts of the locomotive warm.
In later years this box became less common, except in really far northern locations. For MoPac units, only the GP7s had them.
You can see this feature from the side, as a silhouette.
RG7
