Locomotives

With the downturn in business, a lot of older EMD 4-axle units have been 'mothballed'.  Our Sweetgrass and Great Falls Div. branches, out of Shelby, MT (on the High Line) now sport a lot of Dash 9-44CW, etc., where the GP-38 once reigned.  These are not "132# gorilla" branches, but the loco count is down.  We even have some (Yuck!) SD-70Ms, etc., coming up on coal trains, heading west, much to the chagrin of the MRL.  The dedicated 'switchers' are history, being replaced by GP-38s.  This is DP territory, with locos being dropped off or added to the unit trains.  Wish we had a "Dedicated Hostler" who really knew how to set up DP units!  Guess "Mechanical", in Fort Worth does, too!!!

GP40-2:

Just use 6 axle AC power on everything like CSX does. That way you never have to worry about outdated 4 or 6 axle DC locomotive issues. LOL.

On the railroad where I 'm employed we use 4 axle power on tracks which have worn rail and ties. Six axle power is much harder on rail and ties, especially on curves.

joesap1:

On the railroad where I 'm employed we use 4 axle power on tracks which have worn rail and ties. Six axle power is much harder on rail and ties, especially on curves.

Sounds like what happened on D&RGW's Monarch branch.  It was standard-gauged in the mid-1950's and the original plan was to use SD7's because of the grades (up to 4%).  However, the long wheelbase caused derailments on some of the curves so GP9's became the standard power on the branch.

 There's a rickety iron bridge in Indy that was too weak to haul fully loaded covered hoppers over,so they were partly unloaded and the excess trucked around,of course we had 4 axle locomotives which had greater loading per axle than those hoppers! We would pray before we crossed. Some clever railroads would put a spacer car between the engines and run long jumper cables across a flat car or through a coach to spread the weight out across the bridge. Of course proper bridge maintenance would solve this issue!