My WA photos

[coopers]

Yet another NS engine at Delta. They can send those back as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Bill Anderson]

Yet another NS engine at Delta. They can send those back as far as I'm concerned.

I hope the Interstate unit hangs around for awhile. It passed through Edmonds Sunday on a southbound (tt/west) freight.

 

[Drewster]

It seems these days it's harder to find an all orange consist, than a colorfull foreign power consist.

 

[coopers]

It seems these days it's harder to find an all orange consist, than a colorfull foreign power consist.

I know it's very disappointing. I like uniformity and it's no fun when it's mixed...unless there's an ex BN Exec unit in there. When there's foreign power in there is that just because of how shuffling of engines worked out or are they leasing units from various companies other than CITIRAIL?

 

[coopers]

Unknown to me there was a slide down south which may explain why I had ZERO activity north of Marysville. I did miss a cool consist going south from Stanwood. I took a gamble to catch it before it got the clear from MoW to proceed after they cleared a tree from the line and that backfired on me. Oh well. It was a BNSF geep (not sure what model), two BNSF B-units and a Santa Fe geep (blue/yellow one).

Ended up in Bham and found these two workers.

 

[Bill Anderson]

I know it's very disappointing. I like uniformity and it's no fun when it's mixed...unless there's an ex BN Exec unit in there. When there's foreign power in there is that just because of how shuffling of engines worked out or are they leasing units from various companies other than CITIRAIL?

There can be several reasons why foreign power appears on a railroad. Railroads have "run-through" arrangements on through freights so that time is not wasted swapping out engines at a terminal. Sometimes run-through arrangements are not equal and one railroad will owe the other something akin to "mileage", so the foreign units may remain to balance the accounts.

You are correct about leased units. Other members have reported that the CP units which have been showing up on BNSF are leased.

 

[coopers]

There can be several reasons why foreign power appears on a railroad. Railroads have "run-through" arrangements on through freights so that time is not wasted swapping out engines at a terminal. Sometimes run-through arrangements are not equal and one railroad will owe the other something akin to "mileage", so the foreign units may remain to balance the accounts.

You are correct about leased units. Other members have reported that the CP units which have been showing up on BNSF are leased.

Thanks for the info. I did not know the pay back system existed.

 

[coopers]

BNSF had two Kelowna Pacific geeps attached going south through Marysville.

 

[coopers]

There can be several reasons why foreign power appears on a railroad. Railroads have "run-through" arrangements on through freights so that time is not wasted swapping out engines at a terminal. Sometimes run-through arrangements are not equal and one railroad will owe the other something akin to "mileage", so the foreign units may remain to balance the accounts.

You are correct about leased units. Other members have reported that the CP units which have been showing up on BNSF are leased.

Is BNSF just not able to get new engines rolled out from the manufacturers or are do they not have the budget to purchase right now? Seems a lot of leasing going on.

 

[Railfan40]

Is BNSF just not able to get new engines rolled out from the manufacturers or are do they not have the budget to purchase right now? Seems a lot of leasing going on.

The problem is they are running so many oil trains out of North Dakota right now that they have a power shortage.

 

[Bill Anderson]

Is BNSF just not able to get new engines rolled out from the manufacturers or are do they not have the budget to purchase right now? Seems a lot of leasing going on.

I don't know about BNSF currently, but railroads sometimes lease engines for seasonal traffic loads, such as grain harvests, which are not expected to continue throughout the year.

 

[brad_in_omaha]

Lots of great photos Coopers!

The problem is they are running so many oil trains out of North Dakota right now that they have a power shortage.

I heard a number the other day, I can't remember the number or even believe it to be true, but someone said that BNSF was short a ridiculous amount of power right now. Like in the hundreds of units?

 

[RCH]

That sounds about right. I've seen three 8200/200 series units in the past 24 hours, and those things are garbage. If BNSF is using them again, they must be desperate.

 

[coopers]

A coworker of mine said to head to Balmer Yard because they're starting to pull old power....and now they want to add 5,000 oil cars!

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/...f-5000-new-crude-oil-tank-cars-246600461.html

 

[RCH]

My brother runs there in North Dakota and he's told me what's killing BNSF is the grain traffic on top of the oil traffic. Here in Texas we're still seeing our seasonal slowdown like usual, but we are getting lots of grain traffic.

We had several stored GEs here in Texas, but they went out to Tulsa to get cleaned up and working several months ago. I see them pretty frequently now on mixed freight trains, but never leading. About a year ago whenever we'd need a head end device, we'd just take one out of one of those stored units. By the time we pulled them out of storage, I think maybe two of them still had horns, none of them had radios and maybe a couple still had head end devices. They were definitely picked apart.

What really surprised me was a couple weeks ago I was on a local and my leader one day was an SD60M. That thing was beat up. I think I was sixty some cars and mostly empty, but it did pretty good with a Dash 9 behind it. And just last weekend I caught another train with another SD60M, but this one was a sublettered leaser. It was my fourth unit, so it didn't get put online. I have no idea whether it was working or not. Still, it's kind of odd to see two of those in a week.

 

[coopers]

My brother runs there in North Dakota and he's told me what's killing BNSF is the grain traffic on top of the oil traffic. Here in Texas we're still seeing our seasonal slowdown like usual, but we are getting lots of grain traffic.

We had several stored GEs here in Texas, but they went out to Tulsa to get cleaned up and working several months ago. I see them pretty frequently now on mixed freight trains, but never leading. About a year ago whenever we'd need a head end device, we'd just take one out of one of those stored units. By the time we pulled them out of storage, I think maybe two of them still had horns, none of them had radios and maybe a couple still had head end devices. They were definitely picked apart.

What really surprised me was a couple weeks ago I was on a local and my leader one day was an SD60M. That thing was beat up. I think I was sixty some cars and mostly empty, but it did pretty good with a Dash 9 behind it. And just last weekend I caught another train with another SD60M, but this one was a sublettered leaser. It was my fourth unit, so it didn't get put online. I have no idea whether it was working or not. Still, it's kind of odd to see two of those in a week.

So is BNSF actually going to purchase more locomotives to help with this shortage or they just gonna lease and pull the old ones and put them back into service?

 

[RCH]

New ES44C4s are coming out of the Fort Worth plant as fast as GE can build them. Most of them have been BNSF, but there were several Citirail units not too long ago (I'm not sure if those were AC, DC or C4s). To tell the truth, I don't know who is using the Citirail units. They were put on outbound trains at Alliance, but I don't know if they are staying on the system or not. But to answer your question, yes, new units are being acquired pretty steadily. I don't think the three or four a week that come out of the plant are near enough to overcome the shortfall, though. That's why we're seeing the 8200/200 series units and some of the older Dash 8s and SD60Ms showing up.

 

[coopers]

New ES44C4s are coming out of the Fort Worth plant as fast as GE can build them. Most of them have been BNSF, but there were several Citirail units not too long ago (I'm not sure if those were AC, DC or C4s). To tell the truth, I don't know who is using the Citirail units. They were put on outbound trains at Alliance, but I don't know if they are staying on the system or not. But to answer your question, yes, new units are being acquired pretty steadily. I don't think the three or four a week that come out of the plant are near enough to overcome the shortfall, though. That's why we're seeing the 8200/200 series units and some of the older Dash 8s and SD60Ms showing up.

Thanks for the info. Is CITIRAIL an actual railroad company or just a train supply company? What do the engineers prefer, the ACEs or ES44s?

 

[RCH]

Citirail is the leasing division of Citigroup.

I can't speak for other engineers, but I don't care for the ACe locomotives. I rank them just above the SD75Ms and C40-8s. I've had my share of ACes dropping their load or laying down on a hill or having bad order dynamics, so I'm a bit jaded. My personal preference is the AC4400CW or the ES44AC, followed by the C44-9W, then the ES44DC and ES44C4. I like the older Dash 9s and ACs because some of the features on them that the engineer could select became automated on the Evolution Series. I trust myself to use those features when I need them over the computer deciding for me, especially in adverse conditions.

 

[coopers]

Citirail is the leasing division of Citigroup.

I can't speak for other engineers, but I don't care for the ACe locomotives. I rank them just above the SD75Ms and C40-8s. I've had my share of ACes dropping their load or laying down on a hill or having bad order dynamics, so I'm a bit jaded. My personal preference is the AC4400CW or the ES44AC, followed by the C44-9W, then the ES44DC and ES44C4. I like the older Dash 9s and ACs because some of the features on them that the engineer could select became automated on the Evolution Series. I trust myself to use those features when I need them over the computer deciding for me, especially in adverse conditions.

Very interesting info. Visually I love the BN executive macs, how are they to run?