BNSF train waits at Tehachapi to descend the grade to Bakersfield. Taken from the Gas Station. 2 H2 BNSF Dash 9s, a Warbonnet Dash 9, an NS Dash 9, and NS SD70ACe and a CP AC4400CW make for a colorful consist.
I neglected to point out that the lead dash9 in my picture has hood doors painted in H1 and out of place.
Wow. I wasn't aware of such high horsepower output. Why so much? What type of tonnage do they normally pull?
LRC stands for "Light, Rapid, Comfortable". This is a passenger loco, designed to pull specially built lightweight passenger trains at high speeds, with tilting suspension to take on the curves at speed. The tilting part didn't work out so well, and the high quality of track needed wasn't always present. If it would have worked, it would have been serious competition for airlines in the medium haul routes, like the Quebec-Windsor corridor. Eventually, the LRC coaches ended up behind F40PHs on short haul routes, and the locos were retired.
I did know it was a passenger unit, by those colors and VIA logo. I was just a bit surprsied by the high horsepower. These must have run as single units, and needed a bunch of that HP for other uses such as HEP.
Had it all come together, the LRC trains would have gone at 120 mph - which needs quite a bit of power - and there would be a lot gobbled up also by the HEP requirements. If the F40PH case is used as an example, there could be up to 500 hp siphoned off just by train lighting/heating/AC, so there's still about 3200 hp left for traction. That's good enough to get the train up to 120 mph and hold it there. That kind of speed means that a Montreal-Toronto run would have taken a bit over three hours - not bad considering that's about the same, or even less than the airport-hassle/actual-flying/more-airport-hassle of air travel (even more true now). With the additional advantage of downtown-to-downtown service. It would have been nice to hear a 251 tearing by at 120 mph... kinda like hot-rodding a C636...
