the Appalachian & Ohio Railroad, a WATCO Company, is rumored to be wanting to get out of the lease they signed over a year ago to operate CSX's Cowen Sub. Word is the expensive maintaining of the 20 SD50's and the older DC locomotive technology makes the line unprofitable. WATCO met with CSX on Good Friday (April 14)...no update on the outcome of the meeting. A rumored replacement for the A&O, should CSX terminate the contract with WATCO, would be the Paducah & Louisville (PAL).
If true, I'd not be surprised. Watco isn't a company that will take on a serious project. Keep us posted! Boxcab E50
Ironic that Trains magazine just had a nice article on the A&O and about expected profitability. It sounded like the bigger problem was getting coal cars. That A&O may have to buy them. If the 50s are such a liability, why not swap them out for dueces?
Well the A&O already has several coalporters...i don't know what the previous owners were. I saw two trains setting i Grafton with A&O cars, so there are atleast 200 already in existance. I'd like to think the A&O can hang on and be ok, but no one really knows until CSX or WATCO come out and make a statement.
The impression the article gave was that the carloads were way down from expectation, but that that was due to lack of coal cars. The shippers seemed happy.
A message from the Skeptical Enquirer....... Timber Rock RR, Watco's line in east Texas, uses some SD45-2s. It may be that they may have to go to SD40-2s and SD45-2s, if the latter are on the market. I wonder if Watco got these engines "rode hard & put up wet" prior to being placed in service......... Also, IIRC, the TRAINS article mentioned a lack of coal hoppers, and it is a wee bit hard to haul coal without available cars. I wonder if this bit of news is no more than someone unhappy with Watco as a whole (hard-core union railroaders, tend to look down on shortlines as "scab" outfits, even though employees on these lines do the same work as their Class 1 brethren), or the apparent ills of the SD50 fleet. I'm not going to believe anything about this until I actually see a report from Watco about them pulling out of Appalachia. Until then, I'm gonna be a skeptic. Remember, the word that pops out in the first post is "rumored"
If it please the court, Your Honor........ From the Watco group at Yahoo, further evidence that they're not going anywhere anythime soon. Names of the posters have been removed for their privacy.
Perhaps, but also keep in mind that to compare the Mission Mountain line to the A&O is akin to comparing apples and oranges. I still maintain it's hard to haul coal without sufficient amount of cars, and perhaps even working with locomotives that were POSs to start with. A&O needs locomotives from the rent-a-wreck firms like FURX, CEFX and Helm. IIRC, SEKR and SK&O are going operations, and Stillwater Central is turning things around. Watco's been making some big gains recently with new lines, so I'm not ready to write 'em off yet.
Latest I have heard is that the A&O is pulling out April 31. CSX locomotives will be operated by PAL crews. This doesn't make sense because CSX wanted to lease off the line to avoid loco maintainence costs....I knew something was fishy when I heard WATCO picked up those SD50's from NRE over a year ago. I don't trust everything i hear, but it does make for some interesting reading.
Bob- Actually, was not talking about Mission Mountain. Look further west, to see some of what's been happening. Boxcab E50
More on the A&O This is what I've picked up from the Watco group at Yahoogroups. The posted in this case is an employee for Watco, and works at the corporate offices in Coffeyville, KS, so he would have a better idea as to what is going on. We received an announcement today that the A&O has been asked by CSXT to turn over operations to the Four Rivers Transportation Group, which is partially owned by CSX. We had been negotiating to keep the line and continue operating but to no avail. The biggest issue was car supply to the mines. A&O was originally going to lease 1500 hoppers to alleviate the supposed strain on CSX car supply but the cars just weren't available. To the question about SD40-2's, the SD50's were cheap to lease and were supposed to meet the requirements CSX had for horsepower on the line. Plus, they were readily-available. Reportedly, CSX will be allowing the new operator to use CSX power on the unit trains. Since Fore River is a CSX subsidiary, how does P&L fit into this scheme, if at all? And it has a bit of an odor, when CSX is allowing Fore River to use CSX power to move coal whereas Watco was using the SD50s. Gotta be more to this than CSX and Watco are letting on, but this is what we know so far.
Definitely more to it than we know. It certainly will boil down to dollars for the CSX family, in the end. :sad: Boxcab E50
I still have a hard time believing the the 50s are really that much of a problem. Everything I've heard about the 50 series is that EMD made a bunch fo recall changes to the offending parts. I think there was even a Trains article in the last year talking about them. I can't see how they would be at the point more prone to breakdown. Or maybe just derate them to 3000 HP. That really just sounds like an excuse.
It is almost a joke how many SD50's (ex-CR units) I have seen on NS in the past two weeks... You can;t tell me that they've led pampered lives.. I don't know that we'll ever know the full story...
P&L / Four River employees will operate the trains with CSX units. I think somehow, CSX meant for this to happen......not enough car supply, charging WATCO for empty hoppers sitting in Grafton. Forcing A&O coal trains to back up on the Cowen Sub because they weren't allowed to enter the yard at Grafton. Well it was nice to see something other than the AC's.......now we're back to 80-car trains with 2 AC's and a lone GP38-2 sitting in the Wye/Engine facility. Buckhannon is going to go dead again.
Pat- How soon might this change happen? Or has it already been done? Hope you've been able to get a lot of pictures! Boxcab E50
Unfortunately I live 45 miles away now, near college, so i don't go home often (holidays, etc...) Last summer a did a lot of chasing and got a fair amount of photos. I don't the change will happen until early next week. WATCO will round up all the locomotives and store them somewhere until they can be shipped a few at a time to wherever they go next....back to NRE? another lease comapny? Other Watco Railroads? There's 5 GP38-3's, 3 GP50's and 20 SD50's, so somebody outside of WV will see some A&O units rolling by in the next 2 weeks (perhaps westward towards Williard, OH?)
Hmmm. I wonder where else they could use six axle units? Operations in my area are on much lighter rail sizes. I think most, if not all of their other companies use four axle stuff? Boxcab E50
