It's slippery rail season on SEPTA, and this year is a very different year. Their shop forces have tinkered with many methods to remove the oily residue that is left behind from the leaves that fall every year around this time: from rail scrubber to gel train to rail washer. Just ten years ago, SEPTA's wash trains looked very different, a veritable rolling museum. Now this year, SEPTA threw in a new twist. Through the years, the trains have been powered by one of the various diesels from their hodge-podge fleet, but with the retirement from revenue service of their aging electric motors and the pressing needs of the diesels to be used elsewhere (when they are working at all), they found one last use for the AEM-7's and ALP-44.

A week before the official start of the wash trains, the newly configured and electrically powered trains were taken out for shakedown runs so the mechanics could get a look at how they would perform in the real world. On October 24 2018, Wash 1 showed up in Lansdale with AEM-7 SPAX 2301.