Grassroots Railroad Sports?

Another "modern" diesel (the newest are pushing 30 years old) that I hope gets preserved is one of the "triclops" SD60Ms, particularly one of the BN units. While the SD60 sold in pretty solid numbers, 1144 units in total, only the earliest of the safety cab-equipped SD60Ms were built with the interesting three-windshield cab that earned them the nicknames of "triclops". After the first 239, broken down into 184 for Union Pacific, 50 for Burlington Northern and 5 for Soo Line, EMD updated the cab design to the more conventional two-windshield cab. In the Burlington Northern Cascade Green and white livery, with the high visibility "white face" pattern, they were pretty neat-looking machines, and were a return to form for EMD after the SD50 debacle and a preview of the future with the safety cab.

One of the later SD60Ms with the more conventional cab. Still neat looking in that late BN Cascade Green livery (one of the cleanest, most refreshing "modern" liveries in my opinion) but not quite as interesting as the "triclops". The SD60Ms are supposedly still mostly kicking on BNSF and UP, other than a couple that were taken out by wrecks, so I don't think any preservation opportunities have presented themselves, but it'd sure be neat to see one of them saved when the time comes. 

The last new locomotives for Soo Line were actually a 5 unit order of "triclops" SD60Ms in the final solid red livery. Soo Line ordered 58 regular SD60s and 5 SD60Ms in the 1987-1989 span, and then, after years of majority ownership by CP, was fully integrated into CP in 1991.

The #6060 doing some street-running in New Albany, IN on former Monon trackage

Here's a weird one: A Soo Line SD60M at Myerstown, PA leading a CP train over Conrail tracks using D&H trackage rights. By 1999, Soo Line had been fully integrated into CP for almost a decade, and CP had acquired the bankrupt D&H at around the same, which included the D&H trackage rights over Conrail that had been given in 1991.

Related to the above post, the D&H came this close to owning lightning stripe-painted SD60Ms under CP ownership. When CP took over the D&H, they looked at an order of fifty SD60Ms for the D&H, since the D&H's roster was pretty used up. They had some rebuilt GP39-2s from MKRail, but other than that, everything had either been sold off by Guilford to Guilford or was old junk. The U23Bs, ex-LV GP38-2s and ex-RDG GP39-2s were over 15 years old and there were some orphan Alcos RS-32s and C424ms rattling around and that was about it. The D&H under Guilford had tested the EMD SD60 demonstrators, but the general consensus was that that was just Guilford getting some horsepower hours for free and there was no real purchase considered. Remember, in it's forty-plus years of existence, Guilford/Pan Am never once bought a single brand-new locomotive. The SD60Ms were to be numbered in the 7900-series number block, and EMD even drafted up paint schematics for how they would be painted up.

In the end, CP decided to buy up a fleet of used SD40-2s of Southern, UP and KCS ancestry. Many of them were painted for CPR, but they were owned by the D&H. Even some original CP units were reassigned to D&H and their blue cards said D&H. These never received D&H paint, largely because CP ended up deciding to make the D&H a "paper railroad" and merge all it's good rolling stock into CP's roster. Those who worked for D&H at the time though said that the SD40-2s arrived with schematics for painting them in D&H lightning stripe paint too, but when they asked if it was going to happen CP management told them "Not a chance."

Some enterprising modelers did give us a look at what a D&H SD60M would have looked like.

The SD60 demonstrators units when running on the D&H. Guilford borrowed them and ran them on both the D&H and B&M but pretty much everyone, other than the guys at EMD, knew that Guilford wasn't going to buy any. The demonstrators really didn't help their cause when they mysteriously shut down on one trip and had a bunch of EMD techs crawling all over them trying to figure out what was wrong with them. That doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

A pair of the GP59 demonstrators testing on the D&H, along with what looks like one of the Guilford/Springfield Terminal ex-ATSF SD26 "slushbuckets". Again, Guilford bummed these off EMD just to have some extra horsepower, but these were also almost considered for D&H. The EMD -60s used a 3800hp V16 710 engine, while the -59s used a 3000hp V12 710 engine (basically the equivalent of the GP40 to the GP39). After the D&H was cast into bankruptcy by Guilford, the bankruptcy trustees looked at purchasing 10 GP59s for the D&H, both to keep operations moving and to make the railroad look a little more appealing to whoever was interested in buying it. By the time they made that decision though, CP had gotten quite deep into talks of buying it and the trustees got cold feet on purchasing them.

Also, when New York, Susquehanna & Western became designated operator of the D&H during the bankruptcy proceedings, CSX financed the purchase of 20 additional GE B40-8s for the NYS&W (they already owned four) to keep traffic moving on the D&H. These B40-8s were painted in the NYS&W yellowjacket livery, but those who knew Walter Rich said that he had told them, if the NYS&W had been able to buy out the D&H, they would have been repainted into D&H lightning stripe, and he had even already had GE draft up the paint schematics. In the end, the NYS&W didn't have the financial horsepower to secure ownership of the D&H, and was outbid by CP, and the twenty B40-8s were handed back to CSX. Reading about these from D&H/NYS&W veterans, they weren't well-suited to use on the D&H; 1000hp per axle made them just too slippery on the rather mountainous D&H.

Here's the Soo Line/Burlinton Northern crossover in Minot, ND circa 1980.

Here's the Trains.com: Gassman Coulee Trestle, Minot, N.D. (Great Northern, built 1899) built to replace the 1887 wooden trestle that blew down in 1898.

The local urban legend is that back in the day, on a drunken bet in a bar, the local WWII flying ace, aircraft builder, and stunt pilot named Al Pietsch said that he could fly through and under the trestle. The next day after sobering up and even though his buddies said that he didn't have to do it, he flew under the trestle and between the piers after doing several practice approaches over the top of the tracks. Finally he went for it, turned his plane sideways at the last second and flew under the trestle. (True as far as was told to me.)

Back when I was a lot younger we would walk across the trestle which only had bump outs at each pier and if a train came, you had to hustle to those bump outs or get knocked off of the bridge which wasn't too difficult because trains don't travel very fast over the trestle. ND statehood was 1889

In reply to VolvoHeretic :

Reminds me of the Moodna Viaduct, opened in 1909 and not too far from me. I shot it some years back.

In reply to 02Pilot :

Except our scenery isn't quite so nice. Funny thing I notice about looking at photos of North Dakota from the turn of the last century is that there are no trees anywhere, not even in the river valleys. Everything we see now was planted by us humans. I can't figure out if there was a mega drought that killed everything off or super prairie grass fires.

I wonder what kind of foundation there is under these trestles, I hope it's not just that little piece of granite. 

So, made the drive down to the Reading & Northern today for the RDC charter trip tomorrow. I decided to chase NRFF, and while heading down to North Reading to get ready, I saw some power headed out of Tamaqua Yard. This would be QASD (Tamaqua-Shenandoah), which was running power up light to go grab coal loadouts. The #3069 in the lead is one of the newer additions to the R&N roster: it's a Conrail SD40-2 that they bought off of NS and was put back in service a little over two years ago, although it has yet to see a paint booth.

Some stuff displayed at Tamaqua include a Pennsylvania Power & Light 0-6-0 fireless cooker, a Safe Harbor Dam Plymouth, and a couple (ex-New Haven?) cabooses on a piece of panel track.

NRFF (North Reading Fast Freight) is the R&N's premiere freight, running over the entirety of their mainline, from the shared NS/R&N North Reading yard all the way up to the yard at Pittston. Now, all week I'd been seeing photos of healthy 60 car trains with all three of the "Fast Freight"-painted SD50s on the point, and I'd been hoping for that. Nope, I got two SD40-2s and 10 freight cars. A bit underwhelming.

That lead SD40-2 is one of the first of the SD40-2s acquired by R&N and was originally built for M-K-T before being transferred to Union Pacific when UP acquired the Katy. R&N purchased it, and a bunch of other SD40-2s, from UP in the early 2000s, before acquiring more later on from NS.

Passing by the restored passenger shanty at Molino.

The trailing SD40-2 is the #3064, which was painted this winter. It was originally built for Burlington Northern, then was sold to Helm Leasing, then was purchased by Norfolk Southern, before being sold off to NS in the fall of 2020.

Passing through New Ringgold.

Having picked up cars, the #3058 and the #3069 are waiting at East Mahanoy Junction with SDQA. The NRFF has to clear East Mahanoy Junction before they can proceed back to Tamaqua Yard.

The NRFF rounds the curve approaching East Mahanoy Junction.

The NRFF heads east, while the SDQA waits in the distance.