A taste of yesterday. Dropping off a load of cars, then hightailing it out of town! Have video, from north end of town as they left. Downgraded power! Front to back: SD70MAC, SD40-2, SD60M The SD40 looks to be recently painted! Too fresh looking yet! Indiana Harbor Belt? A 50' gondola being dropped in town. And who would have figured, about 3 1/2 hours later, it would be snolwing so hard, one might have 300' visibility!! Grabbed 'em before the weather turned, yet again!
A while back I posted a long-range photo of the Alstom shops in Pointe-Saint-Charles, Montreal, Quebec: IMGP3584A_PointStCharlesShops_Yard by Mike VE2TRV posted Oct 28, 2016 at 2:01 PM That photo was taken from Mount Royal several years ago. Since then the facility has been transferred to the AMT commuter rail agency: AMT_ex-Alstom1 by Mike VE2TRV posted Mar 2, 2017 at 7:15 PM Where the agency's engines seem to be serviced at the CP St-Luc roundhouse, the Point-Saint-Charles facility look like they're mainly used as car shops. Several of the AMT's Bombardier cars are parked there, and what looks like a pair of green GO Transit F59PHs are parked in the background. Before Alstom, the shops were known as AMF Technotransport, and originally were CN's Pointe-Saint-Charles locomotive servicing facility. They were well equipped, as CN even built a few of its own steam locomotives there. They tried to do some contract work for other railroads, but it was hard to compete with other contract shops when paying their workers railroad wages.
I doubt that those trucks are converted to roller bearings. The only converted trucks I've seen have the cover plate removed, assuming for identification. The only time I have seen rebuilt friction bearing trucks was on a caboose at a museum, so I do not think that they were that common. If this was indeed 1975, then friction bearing trucks would be around for another 5 years, until 1980. I just found this picture on the internet.
No. Longmont isn't that big! Big enough, but no servicing facilities. I've seen a fuel truck pull up and fuel locomotives a couple of times. But, that's about as much as I've seen, as far as service goes! Any servicing, they go to Denver. The "demoted" power are the SD's. Not the 3 GE ES44DC.
Finally caught up to this train in Broomfield. After seeing it in Longmont. Did NOT have camera gear with, so I was on a wild goose chase! Visitor from south of the border. FerroMex SD70ACe. Second unit in consist.
Out for a bike ride today and found a unit grain train coming to a stop at Cedar Lake Jct on the BNSF Wayzata Sub.
Cedar Lake Yard and engine facility was directly behind me. The Kenilworth Trail is the old roadbed. Now it's all prairie traversed by single track BNSF and TC&W, and bike/walking trails.
I see similar big ol' reefers on a downtown spur and someone told me that they are loaded with frozen French Fries! That's a lot of spuds.
The newer paint from the nose modifications adding the step boxes seems to always stand out. I guess the original configuration specified by Amtrak was not very crew friendly in freight operations.
Judging by the front end, the original nose definitely does not appear to be too crew friendly, which is probably why Santa Fe modified it.
