Burlington Northern locos

[pandabear]

Excuse me if this had been asked before, but does anyone know why BN never purchased any GE Dash 8's or 9's(other than the LMX's) before the merger? I would assume they were concentrating on getting as many SD70 MACs as fast as possible to ramp up Powder River service, but wasn't the AC 4400 available also?

[Anonymous]

I think they had a bad experience with GE and focused buying new locomotives from EMD.

[pandabear]

I wonder what it could have been. I know they bought a lot of C30-7's. I never heard anything about problems with them or the U-Boats they had.

[Anonymous]

Back in the late 80s/early 90s I lived in Scottsbluff, NE and belonged to a club. Several of our club members worked at the BN shops in Alliance, NE. I remember some of them making the comment about 1990 to the effect that, "well, BN's gonna be an all EMD road--no more GEs!" No insight into that decision was offered. I suspect GE and BN got crossways on some financial terms rather than a problem with equipment.

[alstom]

Let me say that I have to agree with "80SF5." I think that they had bad expieriences with their purchasing of the "U Boats" from GE a time before. Ever since, it has seemed like GM (EMD) has been their main loco builder. Plus, they probably thought GEs were toasters too---lol.

Richard

[pandabear]

Well, I for one shudder at the thought of a wide cab GE in traditional green and black. Now if they had painted them in the executive colors, that's a different story!
I wonder how the BN execs felt when they merged with ATSF and got a whole fleet of GE units!