While traveling in Janesville, WI today on business I took a few minutes before departing to visit the Wisconsin Southern yards and engine facility there to see what was going on. Imagine my shock to see two old former FNM (Mexican) GP38-2 units in terrible condition sitting dead (with batteries out and cab windows broken) in the yard! The photo below is of a very similar unit (same series) to the ones I saw. The units I saw were numbers 9290 and 9272 and had sub lettering JTPX (anybody know what that indicates?). I assume they have brought these units in as a parts supply for other operable units, can anybody confirm this?
The WSOR aquired 5 of those “mexi-wrex” I believe. I was told the idea is to make them into three good units. From the ones I saw though, that’ll take a heck of a lot of work, as they are real junkers! One apparently showed up with the cab doors welded shut, as it didn’t have a floor…
JTPX stands for Joseph Transportation Partners- the units are now the property of the WSOR and have been on property since November. They have acquired 9272, 9290, 9254, 9291, 9214 and 9251 from JTPX- plans are (allegedly) to create a trio of working GP38-2s out of the hulks of these six wrecks.
My shots of the Mexi-wrecks can be found at my Flickr site-
No, sorry…I borrowed it from Railpictures.net in order to show an example of what I saw in Janesville yesterday. I believe the picture depicts the unit in a small Mexican station but that’s about all I know of the details.
