THIS MONTH’S TOP NEWS STORIES AND PHOTOS
NKP 765 Steams East
Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society’s Nickel Plate Road No. 765 is on home rails as it sweeps through Cleveland, Ohio, en route to Ashtabula on July 23, 2015. The busy Berkshire hauled trips in Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania through the end of July and the beginning of August before returning to its home base in Indiana. See page 52 for more on 765. PHOTO BY BRANDON TOWNLEY
BNSF RAILWAY SAYRE KOS
Final Tier 3 ES44C4s Arrive from GE
BNSF accepted in June the last of the 8300-series ES44C4s, which are Tier 4 “Credit User” locomotives or Tier 3 units that achieve Tier 4 status because of emissions credits that builder General Electric has banked. Those last deliv- eries included BNSF 8384, 8387, and 8389-8399. As of press time, GE’s Fort Worth, Texas, plant is producing Tier 4 GEs, which on BNSF will be numbered in the 3900 series. None of these Tier 4 examples have been placed into service as of July 1; however, BNSF 3900 has been observed testing near GE’s plant in Texas.
“Dual Fuel” Testing
Three of BNSF’s “Dual Fuel” locomo- tives, ES44AC 5815 and SD70ACes 9130 and 9131, visited terminals in the rail- road’s southern reaches throughout the
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RAILFAN.COM
month of June to make operating crews and mechanical personnel familiar with the locomotives and the matching fuel tenders. The locomotives operate on Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) that has been cooled to -260°F, leaving nearly nothing but methane. When a locomo- tive’s prime mover is idling or at any power setting up to and including Run 3, it burns diesel. Beginning at Run 4 and all the way up to Run 8, the prime movers burn a combination of diesel and methane/LNG, using 91 percent meth- ane at peak performance. The flash point of the LNG fuel is 1000°F, and training reinforced the concept that nothing on the locomotives is hot enough to inad- vertently ignite the fuel.
Service Interruptions
For the second consecutive month, por- tions of BNSF’s Madill and Creek Subdi- visions succumbed to heavy rainfall and flooding after remnants of Hurricane Bill pounded portions of eastern Oklaho- ma and Texas in June. The right-of-way near Ravia, Okla., on the Creek Subdivi-
sion had water 36 inches above the rail- head near the crossing over the Washita River. The flooding began on June 18 and lasted through June 23. Attempts by BNSF to dump ballast and rip rap to sta- bilize the roadbed and raise it above the water failed as rain fell faster than engi- neering crews could perform that work. While the Madill and Creek Subdivi-
sions were out, the railroad held most traffic but detoured some Tulsa, Okla.- Temple, Texas, traffic via the Red Rock Subdivision, for as long as that corridor was in service. Coal traffic that runs over the Madill and Creek Subs also detoured, including Train C-BKMMAH0-39 (Coal loads, Bismarck, N.D.-Lakeside, Okla., via Kiamichi Railroad), which operated from Kansas City, Kan., to Fort Worth via Arkansas City, Kan., and Oklahoma City, Okla., then used Trinity Railway Express rails to Irving, Texas, to gain former Frisco rails east toward Sher- man, Texas, for handoff to Kiamichi at Lakeside. Typically, this traffic operates via Fort Scott, Tulsa, and Madill. On June 18, the Red Rock Subdivi- sion suffered a washout near mile 467.5, near Crusher, Okla., along the Washita
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