Well, deliveries of BNSF’s order for 200 SD70ACes are now under way. Apparantly these ACes are supposed to have an isolated cab. I think their road numbers will be 9130 through 9329.
BNSF 9138 at Blue Island, IL
Looks nice, but the color saturation was cranked a little too high for my liking. Just my preference though.
They do look good.
It’s a unique looking locomotive. Can’t mistake that for anything else.
Actually they won’t begin deliveries until January. Two locomotives are going to the Pueblo Test Track. BNSF doesn’t want them until after the first of the year for tax purposes. EMD has begun building them, so look for a lot of them to show up right after the first of the new year.
I’ve kind of been wondering one thing about the BNSF, though. If they went to all the trouble of designing their new logo and corporate “indentity,” why didn’t they change the paint scheme they’re using? After all, wasn’t the name change and new logo an effort to shed previous identities? If so, shouldn’t the “Heritage” paint scheme have been ditched along with the old name and logo? [%-)]
Well, in a sense it has. I don’t think BNSF themself calls their new paint scheme “Heritage III”, just “New Image”. I think Heritage III is just a railfan term…not sure but I think it is.
After looking at the photo of the new locomotive, I noticed a number of changes to the appearance compared to SD70ACe’s out on the road today. The lowered roof right before the radiator “wings” has quite an angle to it like on the SD90MAC’s. There also appears to be some sort of box behind the radiator section, too. It almost looks as if these units are shorter than usual. Must just be their appearance.
I am excited that this 200-unit BNSF order has been placed, because at present time I’m mostly around BNSF trackage and have only seen a handfull of their SD70ACe’s. With the Evolutions, since BNSF has so many of them now, you see one just about every time you go railfanning. I hope that’ll be the case with the EMD’s after this order has been completed. I expect most of the units will come my way as I’m close to BNSF’s main coal route from Chicago to Powder River (the Ottumwa Subdivision, to be precise). The BNSF tends to use their AC units strictly on coal trains most of the time.
I live in the railroad outback, where SD70’s are very rare. Could you please point out some of the differences that make differ from other SD70’s?
While I live on the BNSF “racetrack” to and from Chicago I rarely see any SD70ACe units except once in a long while on a coal train or two… why are they so rare around here?
I wish BNSF would just take out the BN and leave it Santa Fe. Plus adding back the color of the Chief. Heritage Theme is putting a statement outhere. How many variations are they going to produce? Keep it simple!!!
That’s my opinion![C=:-)]
I gotta admit, that is a striking locomotive. I love the new SD70 Ace’s. I suppose that squared up front and boxy lines reminds me of the older EMD cabs. Hey, they got the silver on the bottom… definatly a SF thing.
Well if they changed the order of their letters it could be BSNF. Or B.S. not finished.
The sign of the isolated cab is the straight line under the cab side number that angles down in front of the battery box. There is a vertical line just behind the front of the nose that isn’t really visible in that shot.
M636C
That would be OK with me as long as they take up all the rail in Texas as well so neither of us can have any trains to watch.
If I could, I would gather up all of the ones here and send them to anyone that wanted them.
We still run a little freight - which always has interesting head-ends, but mostly the irky orange in both GE and EMD. I would so trade them for something different. And my greenies are getting pretty beat up looking.
As of right now (not including the new units) BNSF only has 70 SD70ACe’s, I think 9330-9399. Considering how many routes BNSF runs coal trains on and the vast number of trains, the SD70ACe’s probably get scattered about. Now, since BNSF has hundreds of ES44AC’s, you see them all the time. I bet once this 200-unit SD70ACe order gets completed, we’ll be seeing lots of these engines go through.
Though I do think it’s strange that you don’t tend to see these engines as much. Take the GP60M’s for example. There are, what, 63 or so of those locomotives out on the road today. I think these engines just about go everywhere on the entire BNSF system and beyond…yet in the past year I’ve seen four of these units, including two times when they were leading the train. For a locomotive that works the whole BNSF system instead of just coal trains, it seems interesting that I would see more of these locomotives than the SD70ACe’s.
But isn’t amazing just how many new locomotives BNSF has ordered? I may be mistaken but I think they’re going to order some more GE Evolutions too…not sure where I heard that but it seems that I read it somewhere.
ah there’s nothing like that sharp “new paint” shine. especially on a paint scheme as nice as BNSF’s.
these ACEs don’t have noselights, do they?
CN has some of those too . They are nice . My favorite engines are SD70/75I’s though . CN 5600 thru 5800 series .
actually, CN has SD70M-2s
Same thing, just the DC version.
[D)] my bad . They look alike [swg] I have only got the chance to operate one once so far . It will nice in the summer , had air conditioning ! CN 8014
If you look at that photo closely it looks like CN 2580 in that consist as well . Maybe a CN train is delivering those units to the BN ?