NORFOLK, Va. –Norfolk Southern has presented Genesee Valley Transportation subsidiary Delaware-Lackawanna with its Short Line of the Year award. In bestowing this honor upon the D-L, the Class I railroad identified the short line’s operat...
http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2019/06/18-delaware-lackawanna-named-ns-short-line-of-the-year
Brian Schmidt, Editor, Classic Trains magazine
And they get it all done with a stable of vintage ALCO diesels!
The place to visit if you're an ALCO-holic!
Flintlock76 And they get it all done with a stable of vintage ALCO diesels! The place to visit if you're an ALCO-holic!
That's a darned good pun, Flintlock, especially with the word "vintage." It's so obvious, yet I don't recall seeing it before.
Still smiling here regarding it.
Thanks NKP, but I can't in all honesty take credit for "ALCO-holic," someone else came up with that but I was so clever I never forgot it.
I did come up with "General Digustion" for this particular part of the Forum a while back when some posters got into a dog fight over some topic that I don't even remember. Shows how important that topic really was.
I look at how the D&L powers themselves like this. My hubby's first boss trucking intrastate only had antique equipment in the early 90's the newest truck he had was an early 80's model truck. But it was the same model as almost the rest of the fleet with the same motor as the rest of them. Then he was offered via my husband's first OTR boss the queen of his fleet Rose as my husband called her. Rose was an 88 IH 9300 that had been overhauled to over 850 HP at the flywheel. Why did his OTR boss get rid of Rose after my husband left him simple no other driver could drive her without ripping driveshafts out of her. So he sold her to someone that had drivers that knew how to handle high HP equipment. Rose is still running 22 years after my husband left her at his first job. She is still that fire breathing monster he remembers also. He gets to spend one day riding in her every harvest season and has for the last 18 years. Just because something isn't new does not mean they can not out work the newest equipment out there. Heck Rose still can out run any of the newest trucks and out pull them why well as those that run GE and newer EMD's can tell you when a computer is deciding if and when to give you the power for moving instead of a mechanical governor that reads OH CRAP I need to give it the fuel now it makes a difference. Or as his boss said a couple months ago. We blew up the truck that pulled Big Red around so we tried Rose on the job. Rose now needs a new right frame rail why she pulled so hard in 6th gear that she snapped her frame at the back shackle of the front axle. But she got Red to his field on time.
While that's a nice story, the downside is that the truck in question had become a prima donna that only a handful of people knew how to properly maintain and operate in order to get the best performance out of it. Whether you like it or not, emissions requirements will lead to its demise.
The current driver of it is a 40 year old daughter of the owner of the company. He bought it for her and had my husband train her how to operate Rose safely in the lower side of the transmission. I highly doubt he's going to retire Rose soon even after her frame rail replacement. Why he just ordered a set of overhaul parts for it for an out of frame plus replaced the hubs replacing the wheels from stud pilot to hub pilot mount. The reason I say he won't get rid of this truck is simple. He runs a farm operation Rose is his go to work horse for hauling cattle and grain to market in the state. She also is excempt from the ELD requirements for being to old. The newest one in his fleet is still a mechanical N14 Cummins he has stated that he was never buying anything that has an ecm for an engine on a truck.
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