Friday, 1 December 2017

Massachusetts, February 2001


MTBA F40PH 1012 (EMD 776066-13 of December 1978) at Franklin, 3rd February 2001. This locomotive worked until 2015, and is now stored out of service.

MTBA 1032 (MK Rail F40PHM-2C 0990-08 new in August 1991) at Franklin, 10th February 2001. In 2017 this has been sent to MPI (Boise, Idaho, part of Wabtec) for overhaul / refurbishment.

CSX 620 rushes through Grafton, MA with an eastbound freight train towards Boston, 10th February 2001. I think that I had just parked and the train came before I could find another spot. It was numbingly cold, so I only saw this and one other train. The objective was to try and see a freight train, as with weather and time, I was being thoroughly unsuccessful with this.

This is a GE AC6000CW (51287 of December 1998) placed into service in March 1999. Neither EMD (SD90MAC) nor GE 6000 hp prime movers were reliable, and the locomotive was derated to 4400hp by software change in 2002 becoming a CW44-6. In retrospect I think that I was lucky to see this one running at 6000hp, and also a SD90MAC at some point a few years before - the latter series have been substantially scrapped or rebuilt, as there were prime mover and frame issues. 

1032 again, this time running westbound to Worcester. The shadows and headlights show the direction, the railroad would appear to be bi-directional.

GP40MC 1130 at Franklin, 18th February. These locomotives were to me probably the most interesting, as they are are rebuilt freight GP40s with flared SD45 style radiators. The rebuilding took place in 1997 and was performed by AMF (Atelier Montreal Facilities)at Montreal, in this case starting from Canadian National GP40-2LW 9568 (GMD A3203 of March 1975).