From the TRAINS Newswire: New locomotives arriving on two Class Is ERIE, Pa. — The first of 51 new General Electric AC4400CWs for Burlington Northern Santa Fe began heading west from GE’s Erie, Pa., factory via CSX last weekend. They are to be numbered 5603-5653, above BNSF’s three earlier AC44s, formerly its only GE A.C.-traction units. The new units apparently are not being delivered in numerical order.
It will be interesting to see where these end up. With all the C44-9s out there, parts commonality was I'm sure an issue. By and large the SD70MACs seem to be held very captive to the coal units, so this may mark the entry of AC traction to the BNSF mainstream. I was about to say I hope they route them this way, but then again they're similar enough to a C44 to wind up in the "So what" category.
Here ya go... Caught this guy on a recent excursion to Crawford Hill with the Friends of the Burlington Northern historical society. One of the higher ups at Alliance said that they like the AC4400's for a variety of reasons, but the edge in horsepower over the 70MAC's was not insignificant. [ 20. June 2003, 05:25: Message edited by: Doug A. ]
While train chasing within the last several weeks, I shot many AC4400s and Executives. [ 14. July 2003, 15:17: Message edited by: Harold R. (aka SD75MAC) ]
Seeing all of those varied BNSF paint schemes of today, I'm reminded some of the months just after the BN merger. All of their predeccor companies rolling system wide. Boxcab E50
