Taken last Saturday, a southbound work train at Mars Bluff, SC on the former ACL main. This remains a beautifully maintained railroad, reverse-signaled with Amtrak permitted 79 MPH and freights 60 MPH. I never thought I'd look wistfully at SD-40-2s, but in 2015 they look wonderful.
They're classics now - clean-lined EMD road freight engines (contrary to the humpy-lumpy machines that came later). They were the GP9s of the 1970s. There are still a huge amount of them around, and many being rebuilt to extend their lives even further.
I went railfanning the day before Thanksgiving and found a crew swapping out a wheel on a spine car at Cajon siding:
Reminds me the rather improbable sight I witnessed 15 years ago at Walong, California, where I spotted a funny lashup consisting of a pair of UP SD70Ms and a NS high nose GP38-2 lumbering up the Loop.... Infortunately I've no close pic of these, I don't recall that GP38-2's roadnumber and I can't say wether that's the very same unit than above. Dom
Such is the state of US railroads today. Power roaming everywhere, plus leasers and rent-a-wrecks. A person who is not a railfan could easily be confused as to what railroad they are seeing, or even where in the country they are.
