I drive out behind the Progressive Paducah shops, on occasion. Usually it’s lines of old Class 1 power, in varying states of disrepair, sitting in the yard. Today however, there were these 3 SD-40-2’s, sitting by themselves, that appeared freshly painted. The livery was a very distinctive silver, with medium green trim. Large white over green “FURX” followed by the engine number along the hood.
I’d had never heard of FURX, but have discovered here that they are a leasing firm. Most of the posts in the archives here concerning FURX are quite old. I was curious if anyone knew where these colorful locos are operated. It would seem they would be a quite a contrast in colors with most roads to which they might be leased to.
FURX is the reporting mark of First Union Rail Corp., which is the leasing subsidiary of a bank holding company. Most of their leasers are SD40’s and SD40-2’s.
If the reporting marks have an X in them, then that means they are not owned by a particular railroad. FURX units are leased units. Many of them are of BN heritage and used to be in the familiar Green and Black. In the past, BNSF employed a lot of them on the system, but lately with traffic down and new units coming online, fewer of them have been in demand. You might see FURX units operating on any of the Class 1s and perhaps even in regionals and shortlines, but most often on the class 1s as leased units. Again, fewer now than in the past.
I assume you mean something like this example. It used to be FURX, but was sold to CIT, another leasing company. I had heard that CIT had bought the entire fleet but that might only have been gossip. If so, active units would be relettered for the new owner but stored units may well have mechanical problems and be waiting their fate, good or bad. A shiny paint job does not necessarily mean that all is well under the hood.
In retrospect, they likely are meeting the same fate as the other units. I should clarify that I was a fair distance away, and the units stood out from the others. Mostly because the lettering and numbering were quite legible, which usually isn’t the case with diesels sitting in that yard. Looking around Youtube, most of the FURX power is in the BN green. The few vids of ones in the silver and green, seem to be from the northeast. This livery also seems to be popular with modelers. I’ve found more pics of models, than of the real thing.
I took these pics outside of Baltimore 2 years ago. I do have more pics of some furx units on my old pc I can post if you are interested in seeing them.
At one time CSX had all the silver w/ green stripe FURX locomotives on lease, then they bought their fleet of ES44DC locomotives and returned them to First Union. CP has some of these on lease from CITX.
The locomotive 3019 shown above are not SD40-2 but SD40. Note the two holes on either side of the axles on the truck side frames, also no shock absorber on the center axle of each truck. The SD40-2 has a HT-C (High Traction 3 axles) If you were looking at the Engineer’s side (right side) you would not see a small window near the rear of the hood (for checking water level in the coolant storage tank) there is the possibility it was upgraded internally to dash 2 electrical’s but that isn’t visible from the outside.
The majority of this series are former SD40 locomotives, however there are a few scattered SD40-2s in there. All were upgraded internally to SD40-2 standards.
Here is a couple of more from September 2000. The last pic unit 3055is a lettered for GCFX. Sorry for the poor quality, I scanned and cropped the images.
Thanks for all the pics and replies. This is such a distinctive livery. Most lease companies seem to always have some bland colors, or painted in the scheme of the RR they’re leased too. I’ve seen some sort of GE units in Conrail blue and sparse markings, on some CN trains around here.
Those GE units are probably lettered LMS, but I think those have been bought up by one of the Canadian roads. At least I think that’s what I see on CP trains on the Harbor Belt in Chicago. As for the FURX units, most of those I’ve seen seem to be in pretty good shape and are well maintained. I’ve had some bad experience with “Rent-a-Wreck” locomotives. Mind you, I haven’t run a freight train in almost five years, working strictly suburban passenger runs now.
They used to be LMS lease units but CN has painted over those letters and put the large noodle on the carbody sides with somehwhat larger IC sublettering on the cabsides. Only CN(IC) 2456 if im not mistaken had her number re-decaled with no IC sublettering on the cabsides.
I remember them on CSX. Used to see them occasionally. I had read they were not supposed to be in the lead on trains but apparently that wasn’t true as they did appear on the front. I had wondered what happened to them.
I recall when CSX was using the FURX units, I worked on several of them in Huntington. Whoever dash 2 those units did a good job, very neat work and in my opinion they were good units.
