One more question off the list! Thanx Dave!
I read your bio and then looked at this strange name for a subject, where did the name come from or was it straight imagination?
I hope you don’t mind my splicing of questions but:
Down here in Florida, I sighted a short all covered hopper train led entirely by BNSF units a BNSF painted C44-9W, SD40-2 and BNSF restenciled but unrepainted Santa Fe SD40-2, all heading north on the Orlando-Kississimee-West Palm Beach line, I was wondering is borrowed BNSF locos common?
Hi Sterling - if you looked at the picture, you will see why a lot about me is strange. The name Jenny was from my mother and the name Mookie is from my cat. Now which would you use if you were me…right - Mookie is much closer to the person!
You had the same motive power we have up here every day (except for this last weekend). The borrowed power is usually run-through - you use mine, I will use yours in return or I need to get something from point A to point B (BNSF and UP here in Lincoln). Or sometimes, they will ship Lincoln a “foreign” power unit to refurbish here at our wonderful shops! That’s all I know about the subject.
Come back and visit anytime!
Mook
NREX is rebuilding alot of old Southern Pacific tunnel motors with standard raidiators and the end result is a standard length hood on a looooong frame left over. theres some pics on railpictures.net. There primer gray with red lettering, looks weird like a liitle boy with daddys shoes on. Long live the rock.
a couple of the older engines we see, do look exactly like the little boy and the big shoes. Like they were cobbled together by a committee…
Hmm Iwaonder what kind of committee cobbled up the European locomotives or Russian tanks . . .
Thanks for the visitation rights, so much trackage and haulage rights!!!
Went to Railpix,saw 9402. Now that is one loooooooooooooonnnnnggggggg
porch. There’s enough room for the glider,a couple of lawn chairs,and the BBQ.
How come they did it like that? I might have thought they would have put some
ballast in.
… to the California Northern – looked quite sharp in green, white, and yellow!! (Especially the nose bell!!!) Anybody got numbers or further heritage on these???
As mentioned above, the Tunnelmotors will fill out the frames…again, for ones unfamiliar with a Tunnel motor, EMD produced them, with the radiators mounted low on the carbody for the Southern Pacific notably, as conventionally designed diesels had a tendancy to overheat in long tunnels, asmultiple engine consists would heat the air in the tunnel, and the rear engines tended to overheat because the hot air was trapped at the top of the bore…the Tunnel motor moved the radiator intakes to the bottom of the carbody, where the cooler air would be located, as heat rises… As far as the GP vs SD designations, the easiest way to describe it, is as earlier posts indicated…SD’s are 6 axle and GP’s are 4 axle, so an SD40-2 and GP40-2 are basically the same in terms of HP and running gear, main difference is the axles, plus shorter frame on the GP’s…The GP38-2’s are basically the same as a GP40-2, except that the diesel prime mover is not turbocharged, therefore has a different sound, and 2,000HP instead of the 3,000 HP in the GP40 and SD40 variants… There were also SD38’s and some 38-2’s built. 2,000HP 6 axle units. Conrail used them primarily in hump service in classification yards mated to slugs, Other Railroads may have used the SD38’s for other purposes. Dave Williams http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nsaltoonajohnstown
The short nose SD40T-2s do have a “porch” up front. The SD45T-2s and long nose SD40T-2s “fill out” the frame. By the way, the tunnel motor frame is longer than the regular SD40-2/SD45-2 frame. The SP and SSW tunnel motors have 4300 & 4400 gallon fuel tanks.
Going back to cat litter, don’t forget about shipping bags in boxcars (I don’t know if they do that anymore). According to The History of the Sunset Railway by John F. Bergman (published by the Kern County Historical Society, ISBN 0-943500-14-1) Johnny Cat (http://www.oildri.com/) has a facility near Taft, CA. that used to ship bags of cat litter in boxes. I do not remember when it said they stopped. However, the line from Levee to Taft was abandoned I think in the early 1990s.
You may be seeing SD40 rebuilds. Conrail rebuilt 40 SD40’s from KCS and Penn Central and other heritages to SD40-2 internal specs. They were numbered in the 6900 series and got divided up between CSX and NS after the Conrail split. NS’ are numbered 3425-3447, behind the as-built ex-Conrail SD40-2’s numbered 3329-3424. The SD40 rebuilds are now stenciled SD40-2 due to getting the electrical cabinet upgrades, but externally, they still look like SD40’s with shorter porches and chicken wire radiator grills, although early production dash 2’s had the chickenwire also. There could be other SD40’s rebuilt to 40-2 specs running around elsewhere too. Dave Williams http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nsaltoonajohnstown