Pan Am GE DASH 8 Locomotives

gokeefe wrote:So ... we are now up to 24 units ... as I recall from earlier conversation this is now the biggest power acquisition in Pan Am/Guilford history and perhaps comparable on some scale to new power acquisitions once made by Maine Central or Boston & Maine.

I would be interested to know how many EMD units could be retired for no net horsepower loss. I think its easily going to be 30+.

The burgeoning dead line will take care of those reductions soon enough once the lube oil and sparkplugs run out.

The glut of leasers could also be chopping-block fodder. Lease market fluctuates in attractiveness year-to-year. Some years it's better to play games with short money by doing a lot of horse-trading with simultaneous lease-in/lease-outs of power, some years it's better to hold one's cards in-house. Maybe we're coming off a 'hot' period for horse-trading economics into a cooldown, and the GATX and LTEX contingents shrink back to where they were a couple years prior.

Makes me wonder if the leased units were always intended as a short term solution that gave Pan Am the ability to shop around for an attractive "buy in bulk" option.

It's bigger than an individual Maine Central purchase, but the Boston & Maine has them beat by quite a bit (50 GP9s and 50ish FTs iirc). As for retiring engines, they shouldn't retire any, considering how horribly power short they are. But Pan Am isn't well known for taking the most logical course of action, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

gokeefe wrote:... as I recall from earlier conversation this is now the biggest power acquisition in Pan Am/Guilford history...

Not quite. The purchase of Santa Fe SD26 locomotives was, I believe, the biggest single group purchased by Guilford: 35 locomotives. These were numbered ST 615-649. One of them was wrecked in transit, replaced with an ex-WM SD35 which became ST 614.

The Dash 8 acquisition would, however, slightly dwarf the SD26 acquisition in terms of horsepower or tractive effort.

Then there was the acquisition of Conrail GP40s, more than 50 of them, but that wasn't all done in one group. I forget exactly how those were spaced out or how many units were in each group.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:...sparkplugs...

I hope you're joking.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:The glut of leasers could also be chopping-block fodder ... the GATX and LTEX contingents shrink back to where they were a couple years prior.

The two GATX slug sets will almost certainly remain, because they serve very specific purposes. I'm not sure about the GATX and LTEX GP40s. They could go away in theory if fewer of PAR's own GP40s are being used on road freights in Districts 2 and 3, but it remains to be seen whether or not PAR can or will manage their power with that level of precision.

I may have missed this.. Did we confirm if these new units were bought or leased from GE? Also I saw 7517 tonight idling on the head end of a ton of cars stretching from just north of Lawrence MBTA station to just past the old Lawrence platform. Must be pushed into duty helping out around the yard or just dropped off maybe? Still wearing its pink spray paint numbering but with upgraded LED number boards and footplate lights lit up so it must have some modern touches here and there.

Expected change of reporting marks to MEC indicates change of ownership. I forgot the same thing earlier today as well while reading through all of this.

Reporting marks do not always indicate ownership. The 3400's, 345, 616 and several of the 500's are owned by GATX but carry MEC marks.

Ive heard they purchased these, but the real proof will be a report taken off the blue card. Id imagine someone here will have the opportunity to read a blue card in the coming days to confirm.

The alternative would be to read the STB recordation, which would either be a lease agreement or a purchase agreement. However at last check, 1/6/16, no recordation had been posted on the STB site, and the web can be quite slow to be updated. So the bluecarded is probably the best bet...

7620 and 7627 are now operating with MEC reporting marks on the cabs. Photo by George Hall:

http://photos.nerail.org/photos-origina ... 012863.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

(7627 has MEC stenciled in yellow, and 7620 has MEC in white appears to be white decals)

"Off to the races ... "

This begs the question of whether PAR will eventually renumber these, or if their plan is to simply retain the CSX numbers (and save a few bucks by not having to replace the number boards).

It appears that there's nothing in the MEC, BM, ST, or PTM 7400-7600 series that would need to be renumbered if they want to keep the CSX numbers.

I did find a single photo of an open hopper, BM 7411, from 1971; no idea if they still have this or not, or how many others might have been (or might still be) in that series.

I'm still hoping for the 400 or 4000 series but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Any headed for the paint booth yet?

One of them — I can't recall which one — was headed for Waterville earlier in the week but I'm not sure of the reason. I saw it at Rigby on Monday, I think. I also can't recall whether or not Waterville does any painting during the sub-freezing months.

7517. Dead in tow.

It was on, just isolated. Was N/C.