Change must have been in the air in 1986, because not only was the PV&T talking to EMD about having them provide the electrical gear for a couple of new locomotive classes, but one of those classes – a low-horsepower road switcher – was being specified as a steeplecab instead of the traditional boxcab.

598 (the single unit in class 598) was the test case for a road steeplecab (the 280 and 240 class steeplecabs are used as road locomotives, but they aren’t that fast or powerful, so they live in very particular niches, and the SLR’s 320 class E10Bs almost don’t count because the SLR marches to the beat of a different drummer even compared to the different drummer that the PV&T marches to); a steeplecab built on a pair of trucks from a scrapped class B, a Portland carbody, and a low-horsepower version of the AC drivetrain that ASEA/EMD made available in North America.

This was a gratifyingly successful unit. 2100 HP, which isn’t much for a modern road locomotive, but a ridiculous starting tractive effort and gearing to make it fast enough to power passenger trains if needed.

It spent about 6 months wandering around the system doing basically every chore possible, and during this time it got orders from two of the railroads that the PV&T has trackage rights on (the Montpelier & Barre, in Vermont, had been considering electrifying the line from Montpelier to Barre & the quarries, but until they had a chance to use 598 as a local freight engine on the Wells River line was never serious about it, and the Canadian National, which was still providing rolling stock for the Deux Montagnes suburban line, jumped at the chance of replacing some of the more battered motors with a modern locomotive that didn’t need to be double-headed to pull a regular commuter train uphill through the mount royal tunnel) so after upper management greenlit funding for 10 of them the PV&T’s order needed to wait for a couple of other orders to be completed.

This unit still operates, but now on the BAR between Searsport and Brownsville Junction.