The "Smurf" (BNSF 2047) is in town...

[NM_RailNut]

...for a little while, anyway. I saw it sitting on the ready track at the Albuquerque yard yesterday at about 4:30 PM yesterday while riding the RailRunner train down to Belen; it wasn't there two hours later when I came back on the return trip, so it was probably out switching industries up north.

Seeing any non-turbo units here is rather unusual due to the elevation; there's not any real grades to speak of on any of the spurs (except for one or two, and even those are only for very short distances), though, so a 2000 hp unit works just fine, turbo or not, for most of the switch jobs. Be interesting to see how long it stays here...

 

[kenw]

Perhaps it will be sent to Houston to be retired. We seem to get a lot of last-leg relics here, the low altitude means that de-turboed older units work fine and the lack of hills means the turbos aren’t all that necessary for local runs. I remember that Houston seemed to be the last stop for the GE C/B 28, 30 and 36 units. And the proximity to the scrap yards in Mexico or the port for export makes the final disposition all that much more, well, convenient… L

 

[ECIRailfan]

I liked the blue BNSFs. Liked CR Blue with the BNSF swoosh.

 

[Abilene Ks Railfan]

I think they look "smurfy"

 

[p51]

I had to look it up to see what you were talking about, but I found a shot of it here. I'd never seen this before, what is the story on the blue paint?