Perhaps I did something incorrectly, but I went to Railpictures.net as I often do and could no longer find the nice looking photos of the A &C locomotives. I don’t think Railpictures removes photos, do they?
I then did a websearch and any references to Arizona and California Railroad kept leading back to a Hollywood film called “Torque” and “Rail America”.
Is the A&C still running and are there any websites with photos? Last year on Railpictures there were quite a few shots.
Dale, That unit probably came from Central Oregon and Pacific. We have one down here on the SDIV wearing the same colors. The CORP,SDIV,A&C are all Rail America owned. Down here we have 4 units. 2 are ex CN GP40-2Ws still wearing faded peeling CN colors, 1 GP40-2 wearing CORP colors and 1 GP38 (I think) wearing yellow pain similar to UPs but not the same.
Sometimes! In some cases, the new additions get whatever version of corporate colors they’re painting in at the time… RailTex and RailAmerica has had a habit of moving power around, so one line’s locomotive ends up on another short line somewhere…
One thing that I’ve always wondered about RTex/RA is why they don’t combine some of their operations that are in close proximity to each other. For example, there are like three or four RA operations out of Indianapolis, why couldn’t they just be one railroad?
Thanks a lot for those links of those very nice photos! Just as with Nainamo’s links, the locomotives look sharp and reasonably clean. I sure hope that RailAmerica allows this paint scheme to “hang on” for a long while.
I’m wondering it it has something to do with government “red tape”. The larger a transportation operation is in a region, the greater the regulations, liability insurance, and taxes. I do not know, but I wonder it this has something to do with it.
Are these operations in Indianapolis able to connect to each other by rail? It may be possible that there are plans to unify these companies. Another headache that always results from combining operations is management styles and practices.
When UP and SP merged together, a lot of bad blood and attitudes reared their ugly heads from the operations managers, supervisors, yardmasters, shop foremen, and dispatchers from both companies. Took several years for things to start flowing reasonably well.
The SP guys couldn’t make the UP guys understand that UP’s method of dispatching trains, blocking / forwarding cars to shippers, and employee management would not work along SP routes due to the way it was structured. UP would not listen. As a result the infamous “Meltdown” occurred back in the 90s. A couple of horrid wrecks also took place. TRAINS had one or two good articles that covered it. Things were red hot! Some of the railroaders on here probably remember it.
Thanks for the reply to my question! Though somehow I doubt combining a handful of shortlines (under common ownership no less) would result in a meltdown a la SP/UP… But you’re probably right about red tape, taxes, etc. Then again, RA may have the attitude of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”!!!
I saw this thread and made me think of something I saw this weekend. I got luck and caught the interchange with BNSF and the “another Arizona” railroad. The Apache Railway. They have a green white scheme too, but not the the same as AnC or the NC (Northern California) Cool thing about the Apache is they use all Alco.
I just checked out Railpictures.net, and they have lots of shows of the AC. If you go the search field down at the bottom, type “Arizona” in the Keyword, then select Railroad to the left of it in the search filter. You should get about 30 or 40 pics worth.
I’m a member of the ARZC_modeler group over on Yahoo, which is run by an ARZC employee. The reason for the paint job is basic economics - RailAmerica wouldn’t spring to paint it to match the rest of the fleet.
So no grand plan, just basic bottom-line stuff. [(-D]
