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Electro-Motive Diesel
LAST GASP FOR LONDON PLANT: The Canadian Auto Workers and Electro-Motive Diesel have reached an agreement to complete 28 unfinished diesel locomotives that were stranded in the EMD London, Ontario, plant when the company locked out the workers in late 2011 due to a contract dispute. In Febru- ary EMD announced that the plant would be closed for good and in March the company of- fered union members a generous severance package. The locomotives that remain to be completed are all SD70ACe’s: 13 Union Pacific units plus 15 for the EMD lease fleet. They should be finished by September.
Indiana Southern
WANTS NS TRACKAGE RIGHTS: Indiana Southern has asked the Surface Transporta- tion Board to approve its acquisition of tempo- rary trackage rights over Norfolk Southern be- tween Oakland City Junction and Enosville, Ind. ISRR plans to load unit coal trains at the Log Creek Mine in Enosville for delivery to the Indiana Power & Light Petersburg Generating Station at Petersburg, Ind., using ISRR power and crews. The trackage rights will be in effect until December 31, 2012.
New York, Susquehanna & Western
REBUILT ROAD POWER IS COMING: A half dozen ex-Oakway SD60s are being rebuilt by VMV at Paducah, Ky., to replace leased CEFX SD40-2s as road power on the Susque- hanna. To be numbered NYS&W 3800-3810 (even numbers only), the units will be on long- term lease and will be painted in the railroad’s traditional black and yellow scheme; one may be done in the historic maroon and silver colors originally worn by the Alco RS1s. Susquehan- na’s three well-worn and well-traveled SD70M’s may be traded in on the “new” units, which are expected to be assigned mainly to Binghamton, N.Y.-Little Ferry, N.J. road freights SU-99 and SU-100. They should arrive this summer.
Ontario Northland
PROVINCE TO DIVEST RAILROAD: The Province of Ontario has announced plans to sell off the Ontario Northland Transportation Com- mission (ONTC), which operates the money-los- ing Ontario Northland Railway. While the Cochrane-Moosonee Polar Bear Express will be continued, the Toronto-Cochrane Northlander will be replaced by a bus, and existing ONR bus feeder routes will be spun off to private opera- tors. ONR’s rail freight operations will also be sold off; Canadian National has expressed in- terest in ONR’s freight service in the past.
Union Pacific
ROTARY GOES TO IOWA: In March Union Pacific loaded rotary snowplow SPMW 207 onto a heavy-duty flatcar and sent it and F7B power unit SPMW 8207 to Relco at Albia, Iowa, where it will be rebuilt. Relco has experi- ence, having rebuilt and painted three BNSF rotaries over the past few years.
NJ Transit Casino Trains Roll Snake Eyes, GE’s Still Employed
THE ATLANTIC CITY EXPRESS SERVICE will not resume this spring due to continuing op- erating losses and low ridership, as well as the difficulty of scheduling the trains to run at conve- nient times due to heavy traffic on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor. Operated by NJ Transit and bankrolled by the Caesar’s, Harrah’s, and Borgata casinos, ACES provided plush, one-seat ser- vice for gamblers traveling between New York, Newark, N.J., and the Atlantic City, N.J., casinos starting in February 2009. Eight specially outfitted Bombardier multi-level coaches which of- fered bar service, large leather seats, and other amenities were purchased by the casinos and tacked on to NJ Transit’s order for similar cars. The cars are available for sale or lease. The trains were powered by an ex-Amtrak General Electric P40DC diesel on one end and an
ALP44 electric on the other. They were unusual in that the electric was used as a cab car on the nonelectrified portion of the route to eliminate the need to turn the train or run the power around when ACES moved from the Amtrak Northeast Corridor to the NJT Atlantic City Line at Frank- ford Junction in North Philadelphia, Penn. Orphans on the all-EMD NJT road unit roster, the P40DC’s were chosen because they fit the clearances of Amtrak’s Hudson River tunnels into New York. Surprisingly, the GE’s did not immediately become unemployed; on March 30, No. 4803 pushed Philadelphia to Atlantic City train 4635 at Westfield Ave., in Pennsauken, N.J. (above).
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Electro-Motive Demonstrator Runs on Norfolk Southern
ELECTRO-MOTIVE DIESEL SD70ACE 2012 put in some miles on Norfolk Southern in the spring of 2012. On March 28 the Tier 3 demonstrator led train 380 through Poca,
W.Va., on the West Virginia Secondary with the AEP John Amos Power Plant across the Kanawha River in Winfield.
MICHAEL T. BURKHART
CHASE GUNNOE
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