I have an awesome job which puts me right next to a BNSF line in the greater Omaha area, and live right off the UP main line. Recently, my buddy saw two UP and one BNSF locos teamed up, and thinks that the two RR are under the same management due to this. How do you suggest that I explain the sharing of locomotives and prove that these two are completely separate organizations?
Best way to really drive it home that they are seperate companies is to tell him to buy stock in one and then go to a stock holder’s meeting of the other and try to vote on something. [:o)]
Sometimes it is expedient to hand off a whole train from one RR to another and just leave the engines on the front, rather than swap engines to the 2nd company’s. That then leaves the competitor’s locos on the other’s rails and they need to eventually be returned to the owner. Some times locos are “loaned” or “Rented” to another company due to an extraordinary need for more motive power (sudden increase in traffic or the need to get power someplace and it is expedient to rent one rather than move power around on one’s own lines.
Rather than “ship” them back, they put them to use pulling another train as part of their own fleet. Eventually it will get back to home rails, and be assured, they are paying “rent” on the use of the locomotive and do want to return it. Sometimes the “rent” is paid by loaning a locomotive to the other company for a certain number of hours or miles to “work off” the debt.
You might mention something to him about balancing hours of operation. If NS gets 100 hours of operation out of an BNSF unit, they pay back in kind, rather than by cash.
Here in NY, it’s not unusual to see UP power on the “salad shooter.” They just run the whole train, power and all, right straight through to Schenectady, and return it in kind. All they have to do is change crews and the channel on the radio and away they go.
I often see CN power on CSX trains coming out of Massena (Montreal traffic), so the practice crosses not only state and RR territory lines, but international boundries as well.
A co-gen plant near here was the occasional reason for visits of UP, BNSF, Soo, and Wisconsin Central motive power in the area.
AFAIK, this is a practice which is solely the dominion of Diesel power. Steam locomotives usually stayed within their division - rarely even roaming the length and breadth of the larger railroads. Too, each railroad had their own ideosyncrasies with regard to motive power, so a failure on-line might have been a real problem if the “borrowing” railroad didn’t have what it took to deal with a particular locomotive.
Diesels, on the other hand, are now so standardized that for the most part, the only difference is the paint on the outside, barring such things as hot plates, microwave ovens, and refrigerators…
Charged power by the hour.
Adrianspeeder
Larry, I like the last paragraph in your post: “Diesels, on the other hand, are now so standardized that for the most part, the only difference is the paint on the outside, barring such things as hot plates, microwave ovens, and refrigerators…”
It reminds me somewhat of the practice on some roads of assigning a particular caboose to a particular crew, which enabled the crew to “customize” their own quarters.
One ‘funny’ thing - when you search Foreign Power on any Class I carrier - it may not be in the account of the owning road. A NS engine delivered to CSX by UP, is in the UP power account - not the NS. Likewise a BNSF engine delivered to CSX by NS would be in the NS account.
Fortunately, all the carriers have computers that do all the figuring of the Horsepower Hours (which is how the power is accounted for) and the carriers pay up on the differences between each other - I have no idea of what the monetary value of a Horsepower Hour is.