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I recently drove about 6 hours on the interstate, most of the time paralleling the BNSF mainline from Poertland to Seattle. It made me wonder, with all these 4000 HP wide cap behemoths wandering the mainline's today, what kind of power will be performing the switching and local duty 20 years from now. It's easy to go to any branch line and see a couple of faithful GP38's or GP40's running a light local service. Maybe it'll even be a SW1200. But we all know these things won't last forever, especially as they begin to cost more and more to operate. <br /> <br />So in 20 years will I be in an industrial area and see the (now old and retiring) C40-8 doing the switching? There is a short UP branch line a few blocks away from me that serves a shipping area in North Portland, usually the daily train is headed by a couple of tired SW's. What will happen years from now when the only old locos availible are some SD70 MAC's Let's face it, for a local job that involves some switching, and just about everything else you really can't beat a faithful old Geep. In addition, I assume most smaller local lines don't have the engineering or capacity to handle the immense size and weight of a Dash 9. <br /> <br />Are railroads going to soon demand remanufactur of 4 axle trucks in some lighter and more agile locomotives? Are they just going to have to deal with sending out a Dash 9 for switching? Will EMD and GE do anything to greatly preserve the life of still operating locomotives suitable for the task? I don't know much about railroad so this may be a stupid question, but I was just curious. Thanks.
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