MLW's parent, Alco, experienced several years of declining business during the 1960s following the entry of former-partner General Electric into the road switcher manufacturing business in the United States. This was due, in part, to continuing reliance on GE's high quality electrical transmissions, sold to Alco and MLW at a disadvantageous price by GE. Placed in a similar situation when Westinghouse left the railway rotating equipment market in 1953, Fairbanks-Morse developed its own line of rotating equipment, although this did not save F-M's railway business. GMD's transmissions were built to parent GM-EMD's designs, in turn closely based on earlier GE equipment (prior to 1937). Alco found itself in financial difficulty in 1964 and was purchased by Worthington Corporation, a major manufacturer of equipment for the pulp and paper industry and a former builder of steam locomotive accessories. At that time MLW was renamed MLW-Worthington and continued much as before.