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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