Paying Respect

Resembling a funeral procession, Alabama & Tennessee River Railway train Y102 rolls up to the Progress Rail Recycling facility in Albertville, Alabama. In tow are five ex-Norfolk Southern SD70ACu locomotives that will be set out, where they will await the scrapper’s torch in the coming months. In the beginning, the Union Pacific Railroad purchased 308 EMD SD9043MAC locomotives in 1996 and utilized them in high-speed freight service. Some reliability issues ensued, and by 2013 many were put up for sale. Norfolk Southern purchased 100 units from UP in 2014 to bolster their fleet and entered these into a rebuild program in 2016 which would transform these SD9043MAC units into SD70ACu locos. The upgrade program proved to have limited success, and many were sold off after just five or six years of service. The five seen here carried NS road numbers of 7234, 7248, 7257, 7282 and 7283. They did work hard for as many years as they could, though, and on this beautiful November day in Albertville we paid our respects to these once proud mainline locomotives.

Image recorded on November 8, 2023

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Shortlines always provide interesting locomotives

The dozens of shortline railroads in this country usually provide a certain level of excitement for the average railfan, as the motive power that they utilize is very frequently an older retired unit from one of the major Class 1 railroads. Sometimes the power is real interesting, as evident in this photo of an Alabama & Tennessee River RR local working the Guntersville Turn on a brutally hot July afternoon. The lead unit is an EMD GP20 roadswitcher, originally built for the St. Louis Southwestern (Cotton Belt) Railroad in January of 1962, one of only 20 delivered to that road. The trailing unit is a slightly more modern unit, an EMD GP40-2LW, built for the Canadian National Railway in April of 1976, but equally unique as it is a widecab variant of the model, built in that fashion only for the Canadian railroads. Since the A&TN is a member of the Omnitrax family of shortline railroads, the lead unit is lettered for another of the Omnitrax lines, the Fulton County Railroad, which operates just west of Atlanta, Ga. Though initially leased from Helm Leasing, the ex-CN unit GP40-2LW now has ATN reporting marks, and must have been purchased outright in the past couple of years.

There is much respect for the crew this day, as a quick glance to the temperature reading on the dash of the rental car informs me that it is 104 degrees at this particular hour, and there is, unfortunately, no air conditioning in the cab of #2002. Railroaders are a hardy bunch, withstanding whatever elements Mother Nature throws at them, and performing their duties safely & efficiently.

Image recorded July 14, 2011.

ATN Guntersville Turn Guntersville Alabama

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