do class one railroads buy used cars or locomotives or just buy new ones for what ever they need them for?
BNSF did buy some rebuilt GP38-2s from NRE in 2006, so at least one class one has bought “new” old power.
How soon they forget!
Any other CNW fans out there?
CP bought (5 year lease?) a dozen or two used SD40-2s, but most of them are gone now.
No, class 1’s can only buy new, they’re not allowed to buy used engines.
Of course they do. CN bought 24 SD40-2’s from UP, they’ve got those IC Dash 8’s that came from LMS, the grey CN SD40-3’s were CN SD40’s sold to Alstom and then leased back. CP’s GP40-2 fleet are all second hand, CP’s MP15DC’s(1440-1444), and MP15AC’s 1445-1447 are second hand, CP has/had many second hand SD40-2’s including several rebuilt from ex-SP and DRGW SD45’s.
BNSF has some rebuilt ex-CN SD40’s. CN also has a bunch of old RBOX’s, ex-Rock Island hoppers that they got from BC Rail and IC, former Chattachoochee Industrial Railroad chip cars.
It’s a good bet you could look up any class 1’s diesel roster on the net and find at least one engine that was purchased second hand.
IC’s SD20’s started out as SD7’s (UP), SD24’s (SR, UP), SD24B’s (UP), and SD35’s (B&O). IC also bought a large block of SD40-2’s from BN. RI & C&NW both had a lot of secondhand power.
yeah but none of those were class ones though. Were they??
Yes Carl, I remember well the C&NW buying quite a bit of “preowned” power back in the 1970’s and 1980’s…some from Frisco and many others as well…including (as I recall) quite a few SD45 units in the later years. I can vividly recall ex-Frisco older GP units up in Wausau, WI on the C&NW trains running under Grand Avenue in the afternoon (my very much younger days back in about 1976 or so).
Rock Island, Illinois Central, and the North Western were definitely Class Is!
Other Class Is that have purchased used power in the last 30 years include Union Pacific, Burlington Northern, Denver & Rio Grande Western, Southern Pacific, and Kansas City Southern. KCS, UP, and BNSF have sizeable fleets of power that was acquired second-hand.
RWM
Conrail purchased a bunch of used SD40s in the early 90s and rebuilt them into SD40-2s.
Often when new models came out the railroads would try a few to determine which they preffered then either sell off or swap the ones they didn’t want. Reading dumped SD45s in favor of Alcos as an example.
i never knew that there were so manyt class 1s out there. But i am also new to the railroad thing also(watched trains since i was 4) but started to study them 2 years ago.
There’s a lot less than there used to be thanks to mergers and railroads that went out of business.
The financial definition of Class I has changed over the years with the threshold limit increasing all the while. The Class I’s of 30/40 years ago were much smaller financial concerns than the Class I’s of today. I believe that in about 1927 there were 131 Class I Railroads in the country. (that number may be sadly mistaken as I am operating on memory without factual backup).
The current Class 1 Railroads most likely buy all new Locomotives and Cars.
Since Class 1 Railroads have changed, their financial power has changed.
During the 1990’s and 1980’s Class 1 Railroads like Chicago & North Western and Grand Trunk Western did acquire used Locomotives and Cars. Now they are under the control of UP and CN. The used CNW and GTW cars and locos are being sold to smaller companies.
Andrew
On top of those 40 NRE rebuilt GP38-2s BNSF has they also bought 40 SD40-2s back in 1999 that were former CN SD40s. With one being wrecked i think the 39 they still have are numbered 6961-6999
NS has a whole bunch of grain covered hoppers that they must have bought used. They have their original reporting marks painted over with NS ones added…
Within the past three years or so, all of the six big Class I railroads have acquired used freight cars (I haven’t seen any secondhand KCS cars other than those of predecessors):
UP: 60-foot high-roof box cars, rebuilt aggregate gondolas, center-partition flats, gondolas.
CSX: open-top hoppers, 60-foot box cars.
BNSF: leased stack cars
NS: large covered hoppers from First Union Rail.
CN: high-roof box cars.
CP: lots of 4750-cubic-foot covered hoppers, in CP, CPAA, and SOO reporting marks.
I also remember in around 97 or 98 Conrail bought some gondolas from some regional railroad. Rather than repaint them they actually left them the former railroad’s blue and just renumbered them and gave them Conrail reporting marks. They also had some black ones too toward the end but no idea where they came from.
They do both…within the last couple years the CP bought several rebuilt GP38-2’s, as well as the 80-or-so new ES44AC’s…with more AC’s on order…lots of rental power on hand at the moment,such as CEFX,GCEX,etc…