Remember back in 1976 when America had a birthday party? The BN did up a number of locos in red, white and blue to honor those days. The lead unit is a Generals Electric, the middle unit is a General Motors. I wonder what the General's name was that ran them into the yard? 
Flat nosed power was what the BN F45s were. It was an SD45 in a shroud so the employees did not have to walk outside the engine especially in cold or snowy, slippery weather.
Another oddity was the 7149 in a paint scheme all by itself as no other unit looked like this. The reason was it was built to run on LNG gas but it proved unsuccessful for some reason and now it is just another 3600 hp SD45.
When a unit gets into a wreck the railroad could spend a lot of money rebuilding it or go economical. The 7500 was in a wreck and they rebuilt it without the cab part which has a lot of expensive stuff in it. Now its a B unit so another engine tells it what to do as it labors away as a trailing unit.
The BN painted up 2 of these Heritage locos with locos to promote safety especially at grade crossings with automobiles. Lots of people are careless or want to commit suicide and the train crew pays the price to witness the carnage. Its like Peter Rabbit versus Godzilla. Don't bet any money on Peter.
Around 1990 when the F units were done on the railroad some executive decided that having a few of the old timers around as power for the Executive Train would be a good idea. I agree. Nice way to travel around on your railroad too!
7149 isn't an SD45. It's an SD40-2 with flared radiators.
ReplyDeleteWow, cool post. I'd like to write like this too - taking time and real hard work to make a great article... but I put things off too much and never seem to get started. Thanks though. IEC Standards
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