Rare endcab switchers are still among us

I was train watching Saturday at Wisconsin’s undisputable epicenter of railroad activity, Duplainville, where Canadian Pacific and Canadian National cross on a diamond. The first northbound of my visit was pulling an end-cab, or butthead, in some camps (including the Southern Railway retirees I used to hang out with at Spencer, N.C.) switcher in the engine consist. I was surprised because this was an Illinois Central rebuild of an SW7, and most Class I railroads have downsized their switcher fleets in favor of ubiquitous six-axle units that can shuffle cars one hour and hit the main line the next. The northbound stopped at the siding just north to set off cars on a siding for the local, and that gave me the chance to get a clean shot of No. 1200, the class unit of four such locomotives on the IC roster. You can see how few switchers there are on the CN/IC/Wisconsin Central roster by looking at the rosters we have on line for you at http://trn.trains.com/railroads/rosters.

This was the second time in less than two weeks that I’d encountered an endcab switcher. The first was when I was in Jacksonville, Fla., last month for the Atlantic Coast Line / Seaboard Air Line Historical Society meeting. On a stunningly beautiful winter day (even more stunning by Wisconsin standards, where Trains is based), my wife, Cate, and I decided to take up a spot on the foot bridge overlooking the well-photographed St. Johns River bridge just a few paces away from CSX’s office building. Heck, everybody else seems to have shot here, so why not us?  We noticed a signal was set, and soon, coming north from the Florida East Coast yard, we heard an air horn and saw a headlight. Would we get FEC power, NS power, or something else? Soon, a single CSX MP15AC came striding into view, a long string of stack cars on the drawbar. It wasn’t the grandeur of a set of Norfolk Southern or FEC six-axle units that I’d hoped for but it was rare and getting more rare all the time. A friend at CSX confirmed that for me.

It’s no secret that endcab switchers are in twilight. They just don’t make them any more. Our locomotive columnist, Chris Guss, wrote about the fate of the end cab switcher in our May 2015 issue. Said Chris: “With their ranks slowly diminishing, end-cab switchers will most likely always have a role on certain Class I rosters due to their smaller size and weight, but their days of dominating yard and industrial service certainly peaked long ago.”

 I hate that. I grew up and matured with charming SW7s, SW9s, and SW1500s on the Southern, Louisville & Nashville, Seaboard Coast Line, and Clinchfield in the 1970s and 1980s. They had personality then, and they still do today. Here’s to the butthead!