I spent last night's dinner break sitting on a concrete wall waiting for anything to go by. It was about 6:15 and I was losing sun fast and what should come down the tracks?!!!! A consist with 3 GP38-2s!!!! What a rush!!! I know I know so what's the big deal? I only started railfanning in December and can only really do it when I'm downtown and have a dinner break. I've been hearing y'all say you havn't been seeing many lately. NS 5165 leading, GATX 2616 running second(I'll need some help here, also had GMTX on it) I know its a leaser and I assumed its also a 38-2 cause it looks the same minus the high nose. NS 5134 ran third.
Nice catch... I caught an unknown train today on NS that had 3 NS GP38-2's, a GP40-2, and and SD50 I think the GATX (GMTX) leasers are fairly exclusive to NS.. The train I saw had a NS high nose, ex-CR low nose, the NS high nose GP38-2's... Harold
Nice catch Harold! Love seeing long stings of geeps like that working a train even if there is a SD50 with them............. but then that SD50 is almost an outcast model too on NS so it's okay if it's hanging with the geeps, right?
I don't know what's happening with the SD50's... I have seen an awful lot of ex-CR SD50's lately... Maybe they are wringing the last few miles out of them before they are gone??? Harold
As bad as SD50's are for being mechanical headaches I wouldn't be at all surprised if that SD50 was Dead in Tow.
Believe it or not, but the 50 series are not the huge horrendous maintenance problem the railfan community makes them out to be. EMD fixed a lot of the early issues, and now age is simply catching up with them...
I guess any unit with 20+ years of service on record will sooner or later show signs of aging... Some just sooner than others, like SD40-2's.
I caught a trio of SD50's powering a train yesterday, and an SD40-2,SD50, SD50 lashup on another. All of the SD50's were ex-CR units. Harold
