I was traveling down the valley today when I overtook what is probably a MRVWC on the parallel UP line. There was a DPU on the backend. Roseville has been putting the DPUs about 2/3 of the way back for the past few months, so I thought they must have switch back to end of train DPUs. As I passed more of the train, I saw a mid train DPU set. This is the first time I have seen a MRVWC or MWCRV with two sets of DPUs.
While on vacation in the Columbia River Gorge back in 2003, I caught a westbound manifest on the Washington side that had 5 BNSF Dash-9’s on the head end, 2 mid-train DPU’s about 80 cars back, and two more bringing up the rear. Up to that point, I was thanking my lucky stars that I had not even seen one of those cursed Dash-9’s in over a week of 'fanning the Gorge…I got my fill of them on one train!
Joe H.
when we ran units in the middle of the train we called them slaves on the southern. and when they started putting them in the rear they called them dpu. Nothing has changed except for they dont have the radio car no more its contained on the engine. As a matter of fact all the engines set up for radio trains have had that stuff taken off them. I guess the this will be lost history as it looks like everything is going to be called dpu