When the Burlington Northern and Sante Fe merged which of the 2 had better newer motive power?
Did one of the 2 start selling off the older loco’s?
It would seem the BN would have the older engines alot from the previous merger.
Just curoius.
Mark
At he time of the merger Santa Fe had SD-75’s and I think Bulington SD-70MAC’s. SD- 60’s for sure.
SO Who’s on first, What’s on second, and I. Dontknow on 3rd.
BN got the first SD70MAC’s in '94, the last of which were lettered BNSF.
Santa Fe’s final C44-9’s were also lettered BNSF.
both railroads were on a major buying spree, and I’m not real sure about retirements.
I think most were kept in the “surge fleet” awaiting an upturn in traffic instead using leased power.
I don’t know much about Santa Fe, but most of BN’s SD40-2 fleet(800 units), C30-7’s (240 units) were bought in the mid 80’s. 100 SD60M’s;100 Oakway SD60’s; and the 100 LMX B39-8’s were acquired in '86.
tigerstriped GP50’s now thats a good looking engine
not so sure about the Big New Santa Fe, and those orange pumkin things.
Both railroads had very new fleets of engines at the time. Most of ATSF’s older GP’s had been rebuilt and were on the way out at the time. Still lot’s of GP35/SD45/F45/FP45 still on the roster, bt shrinking.
BN still had a lots of older GP’s that were going through several remanufacturer programs. BN had a huge fleet of SD40-2’s, and a large fleet of SD70MAC’s.
Since the merger, many of the older 1st generation GP’s are now gone.
I still see a lot of older GP30/35s around Omaha/Coucil Bluffs, most still in their orginal BN or SF colors, some with a “BNSF” patch on the cabs.
I saw a GP-9 (however rebuilt, it was obviously still a high-nose Geep) in BN colors as recently as two years ago. There’s a GP-30 in blue-and-yellow SF paint on our local fairly often.
The Been Nuthin’ Since Frisco apparently hasn’t scrapped all their older power yet.
I have to go with BN, even though that’s almost definitely wrong. While Santa Fe had a bunch of new C44-9s and a few SD75s, BN had a bunch of new SD70MACs. I’m just biased against GEs. If I wasn’t, I’d say ATSF.
Trainboy
The modern units BN had were SD60M’s, SD60MAC’s (only 3), and SD70MAC’s, while ATSF had GP60M’s, GP60I’s, SD75M’s, B40-8W’s, C40-8W’s, and C44-9W’s.
Dougal has a point. I don’t think I ever saw any BN Dash 9s or Dash 8s. Pretty sure ATSF had the better half here.
The Burlington Northern and Santa Fe merger was more of a merger of equal partners, rather than other mergers where a more prosperous road has bought a bankrupt line.