By the mid 50s, increasing pressure from long-haul trucks, declining passenger revenues and mounting costs forced western railroads to find new ways to improve service. Faced with expensive overhauls of early cab and hood unit diesels, many began looking at new equipment as well as ways to improve existing motive power.

As a follow up to its successful introduction of the FT, EMD made a few improvements to the design and offered its 1,350-horsepower F2 which was essentially an FT in a new body