This is a screen capture from the Virtual Railfan Belen cam on you tube from last night (12/3/20) at about 5:45pm eastern. This unit was heading westbound and 4thout in consist. Super coolest thing I've seen in a while.
I am thinking this test bed was created from the hulk of some trade-in they acquired? Do such items ever get sent to Pueblo for any testing?
It might be a new unit. It looks to be lettered for GECX. BNSF 3000 is already a GP40M, so it can't be a BNSF locomotive. This Trains article makes it sound like it is a new unit, but part of a BNSF order or at least designed with BNSF in mind. https://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2019/12/10-wabtec-makes-first-test-with-battery-locomotive. It has C4 trucks which are exclusive to BNSF. The GE road number 3000 has been used before, both on the natural gas ES44AC demonstrator, and earlier on one of the preproduction 'Super Seven' units that led to the Dash 8. BNSF mentioned this unit at a presentation here at the university, and they seem pretty excited about it. You can see the BNSF sublettering on the nose too. I think it may have been partially funded by one of those California environmental grants aimed at reducing emissions. The Gensets were born from the same program. GE (Wabtec) is also developing battery locomotives in Brazil, and I guess there are already battery switching locomotives, which I have yet to see. NS has at least one. Some of the guys I talked to doubt the feasibility of it, but people said the same thing about diesel. This locomotive is like the ATSF Amos and Andy. They saw the death of steam, and we may be watching the death of diesel right now. That's crazy to think about and a bit scary too. What will the future hold for railroading?
This is the battery locomotive that's going to be tested and used in California. The idea is the batteries will charge using energy generated from dynamic braking. It is designed to be used with conventional diesel electric locomotives (it is being shipped from GE/Wabtec with a pair of ET44C4s), so let's not call diesel electric dead just yet.
Apparently it is being used between Stockton and Barstow. https://www.bnsf.com/news-media/railtalk/service/battery-electric-locomotive.html I don't know what kind of support infrastructure this locomotive needs, the shop crews will probably need to be trained to maintain units like this as well.
