BNSF Power in PA!

[Anonymous]

Yesterday (Sunday November 24) at around 4:30pm, I was railfanning in Hershey, PA at Derry Road. The local crew was going about its business of switching the chocolate plant. Heard on the radio was "NS 20W, clear at 101, Track 2 East". That meant that an intermodal train from Chicago, IL to Croxton, NJ was about 3 miles away and closing. The 20W is pretty much standard intermodal fare, mostly trailers and a few containers, and generally less than 20 cars long. However, as it rounded the curve near Hersheypark, headed toward us at Derry Road, the other guys and I were stunned to see a BNSF SD40-2 in the trailing position. The lead engine was the ubiquitous C40-9W of NS. If anybody else caught this rare occurrence, feel free to comment. I wonder if we are going to see more "foreign" power here on the east coast? UP SD70 engines (with the winged logo) turned up on an eastbound coal drag about a year ago here in Reading, PA also.

[Anonymous]

What you are seeing is A new 'runthrough' aggreement between NS and BNSF. The train originates in Los Angeles and runs to Croxton NJ via Chicago, and vise versa. NS engines run all the way through to Los Angeles here daily. You should start seeing more "pure' BNSF lashups in the future.

[Anonymous]

Question? Not to get off the track. If say, a BNSF engine breaks down in Pennsylvania. Who fixes it? Does NS charge BNSF for any repair costs?

[Anonymous]

On BNSF almost all of our road power is newer GE Dash 9's which are under warranty / contract to be repaired by GE which has facilities at most major hubs. Light repairs and maintenance if needed would be done by whoever was using it and charged to the owner or would be 'run off' in miliage.

[BNSFNUT]

That sounds like the lash up I saw in Binghamton NY on 20T Wed 11/27/02.
Now if we could get lucky and have pass by when the NS is using a UP engine for the local engine it would make an interesting photo.

[eolafan]

BNSF is the main road through my town of Aurora, IL (with EJ&E a distant second). We frequently see "foreign" power on the BNSF through here every week. This power can run the gamut from UP on their trackage rights trains (a holdover from the days when SP had trackage rights on BN), to CN power on their shared trains, to NS power and almost anything else you can think of (I can't think of many road's power I haven't seen at one time or another). Jim