 Five EMD MRS-1s were sent to the Naval Ammunition Depot in Hawthorne, Nevada (now the Hawthorne Army Depot), but were unsuccessful there and placed into storage.Unit #1820 was not placed into storage; instead, it was used initially for cold-weather testing.It was broken in on the Belt Railway of Chicago, and in November 1952 the locomotive was shipped to the Canadian National Railway for testing on the Hudson Bay Railway between The Pas and Churchill, Manitoba, where it became the first diesel locomotive to operate on that line.