Not much new from me, so we'll go back to 2020. A westbound V-train rumbles out of Gassman Coulee neat CP106, near MP 10.4, BNSF Glasgow Sub. An eastbound CP train 198, Vancouver-Chicago intermodal, blasts through the Des Lacs River valley just east of Donnybrook, ND on the CP Portal Sub in July 2020, as the canola fields were afire in bloom. Yours truly was atop a ladder in the middle of nowhere to get this view--must have been a funny sight for the crew!
Coming down from Arkansas, a container train switches onto the old SP line running from Dallas to Houston at Corsicana, Texas. May 11, 2023.
I've not been out much this week, so from 09/03/2019 is NS local P85 working at Blythewood, SC. The track here is smartly laid out, with one highway crossing and a long tail track and runaround beyond so that crews can switch as much as needed without blocking the crossing. The pair are GP-60s, built for NS in 1991.
Sometimes a lousy picture is better than no picture at all. By the time yesterday's NS 19G finished its work in Reading at Spring Street Yard the sun had swung over to the wrong side of the tracks. NS 1700, repainted as a tribute to Erie Lackawanna in 2015, usually works in northern New Jersey. The unit is still classified as a SD45-2, although repowered with a 16 cylinder prime mover. SD40-2 6150 was originally built for the N&W in 1978.
1700 was a part of EL's special SD45-2 fleet, being ordered with oversized 5000 gallon fuel tanks, going all the way up to the frame sill, displacing the air tanks to the rear of the long hood, below the radiators. Sets of louvers for cooling at this location are the only hint of the presence of the air tanks. Otherwise, it looks just like another SD45-2. EL had SD45s with large tanks, but those were built on SDP45 frames. In a standardized rail world, there are sometimes some cool exceptions when a railroad has a special need.
Wow, that is SO cool. Good light or not, thank you for tripping your shutter. I'd read about EL 1700 in Railpace some years ago, but had forgotten about it.
