Last night as treat I took a slightly longer way home so we could parallel the UP mainline. I was hoping to get lucky and let my sons so a train run “close up”.
Now the question…why would I see a Norfolk Southern engine on a UP coal route in central Kansas?
I ask so I can plan my locomotive purchase so the roads are similar to what the boys see…BNSF, KCS, UP and the fallen flags in their rosters.
DT
There could be all sorts of reasons and this is by no means uncommon. It could be that they are leasing the engine, swaping power, or it may have been a run through. Not to long ago I kept seeing all sorts of UP, NS, and BNSF on this CSX line to the point that it would almost be tough to tell who owned the tracks. I even noticed a pair of CP Rail SD40-2s way down here in GA a couple of days ago.
I am mainly a CSX/NS guy, but I don’t have a problem throwing another engine that I like into the mix if I like it or get a good deal. And it is perfectly prototypical to do so!
And if you want really strange, last weekend I watched a Chessie cross the CSX on a NS line. (The Chessie was owned by an outfit that had leased the line.
So have fun, and enjoy the foreign power!
Hope This Helps[;)]
Companies sometimes lease their engines for a period of time to another road.
It’s one of three things…run through power, where the train originated on another road and was kept as a unit through to its destination. Its’ a lease or a power reimbursement. Dave Husman explains it better, but basically with all the run through and pooling agreements, sometime roads end up ahead…say NS units spend more time on UP than UP units on NS. UP would loan some units to NS to make up the hours. So it probably was one of the above reasons. As far as locos go…sure you can buy pretty much whatever you want…I took recent trip from CA to OK and back. On BNSF I saw NS and CSX units as well as pretty much every BN/SF and BNSF scheme going. On the uP tracks oh boy…UP, CSX, NS and a KCS. I also saw from the fallen UP flags CNW, SP and DRGW…so you can do just about any lashup you want…and still be prototypical.
I once saw a coal train on the SP south of San Jose. The locos, every car and the caboose were Rio Grande. This was before I had a drivers license so it was mid
1960’s or earlier.
Trackage rights are also a possibilty. The town I live in has two UP main lines (former WP[:D] and former SP[:)]) which cross at a junction just north of town. BNSF operates on both of them.
Run through power is common nowadays–RR A interchanges a train with RR B–it just happens to be a coal train, intermodal, or some other hot train. It is easier for RR B and easier to keep a schedule to use RR A’s engines and run the train to its destination than to swap engines. RR B in turn will either pay RR A for the use of their engines or more likely, will let RR A use a number of their engines to pay back the “horsepower hours”. An SD40-2 will be on RR A a while longer than the AC4400 that RR B let RR A on that hotshot. Equalization of the HP hours.
Thanks for the answers…helps me understand what’s going on and gives me a bit more modeler’s license.
DT
It use to be you could tell what railroads tracks you saw by checking the name on the engine, but with so many railroads pooling power an swaping engine hours it get confusing.
In the last year in the southern tier of NY I have seen NS, CP, ST&L, D&H and NYSW ( local railroads) plus CSX, BAR, UP, BNSF, IC, GTW ,Guilford and assorted leased locomotives. We even had a UP loco for a local (NS) yard switcher for a couple of days.
I think as long as you model the modern era you can run just about and modern locomotives together and nobody could say it did not happen that way.
I model the BNSF but I am planning to add an UP or NS loco to the roster.
That’s the great thing about lease units and run though power. You can do what you want. I can easily add a CP Rail even though I live way down here in GA and I even have the prototypical pictures to appease the toughest of rivet counters!
I have seen Texas-Mexican locos in a NAFTA pain sheme in a Union Pacific engine shop in Witchita, Kansas!
I’ve seen NS, CP, Conrail, Chessie System, and some UP on the CSX main near my house.
Same here… Back in the fall I got to see a VERY strange thing on the CN/GT sub near my house. A loaded unit coal train heading south with only BNSF locos heading it up. I’ve never seen the orange paint scheme in person… VERY COOL !!!
I see a mix mash of locomotives here in Canada as well.
I’ve seen CN’s Kingston sub with IC, GTW, DWP, Sante Fe, BNSF, NS, CSX, GATX, WC & these are in the past year.
The only non-CP units I’ve seen on CP’s Belleville sub are usually SOO units.
I prefer to have a mix of unit liveries. Just my preference. For two reasons basically.
First, It’s my railroad [:)]
Second, if a friend wants to bring train with him, I don’t want him to feel that his "road’ is not welcome.
For these reasons I have locomotives from CP,STL&H, SOO, D&H & MEC obviously, but also B&M, UP, Seaboard, NS, GATX, Conrail, C&NW.
Gordon
Today I watched a westbound UP auto parts/autoracks train running on the former SP Lucin cutoff west of Ogden, UT. The lead unit was UP, but the two trailing units were NS. Over the weekend, I saw several other UP general freights in the Salt Lake area with CSX and former Conrail power trailing the always UP lead loco.
As far back as my earliest railfan recollections in the 1970s, I saw N&W units running through on UP trains in Weber Canyon, Conrail also started to show up more frequently in the 80s. Of course, WP and SP stuff was far more common, but the eastern power wasn’t a really unusual sight.