The Pennsylvania Railroad, long a leader in new railroad technology, was slower than most other major lines to convert to diesel power. Its ties to the Allegheny coal industry and its heavy investment in steam technology, especially at its state-of-the-art Altoona facility employing thousands of skilled workers, contributed to that reluctance, and workers worried that diesel adoption would erase their jobs and picketed to protest the change. Yet diesel-electric locomotives offered major advantages over steam: where a typical steam locomotive required shop care for 14 to 16 days each month, a diesel-electric ran 29 days out of every thirty; diesels could be operated by one person, while steam engines still required both an engineer and a fireman; and diesels avoided the costs of ash pits, inspection pits, water and coal towers, and expensive turning facilities because their electric-motor-driven wheels let them run equally well in both directions. GP9 #7048, part of an order placed with GM's Electro Motive Division near the end of the Pennsylvania Railroad's slow conversion, became a symbol of that revolution and helped bring down the curtain on the steam era and Altoona's great steam dynasty.