Retirements and Disposition of CR Equipment

Found this on YouTube. Thanks to the person who caught this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpeROL7c-aY" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

MBTA F40PH-2C 1050 wrote:The F40 move is currently on the Grand Jct. heading over to the Southside, and straight to Middleboro. idk if they are going to use the WYE coming from the B&A and just straight shoot down there, or come into South Station...don't know the game plan when they get southside

Forgive what may be a dumb question at this point, but where are they headed? Scrap? Sale?

ohalloranchris wrote:

MBTA F40PH-2C 1050 wrote:The F40 move is currently on the Grand Jct. heading over to the Southside, and straight to Middleboro. idk if they are going to use the WYE coming from the B&A and just straight shoot down there, or come into South Station...don't know the game plan when they get southside

Forgive what may be a dumb question at this point, but where are they headed? Scrap? Sale?

Storage, just like the MBB coaches stored at Seaview. They will eventually be put out to bid for re-sale or scrap (probably many from Column A, some from Column B), but it's customary to hold retired equipment in storage for a year-plus until the full order of new replacement equipment has passed certain in-service reliability milestones. Whether they'll stay in Rochester or if tightening space down there eventually forces a second move to Seaview in a few months remains to be seen; there's still a couple more retirements pending from the GP40MC revenue fleet, but they haven't narrowed down their final picks of which unlucky units those will be.


Two follow-up questions:

1) What's going on in Billerica that they needed to clear out the space?

2) Are they planning to clean out the BET dead line of 1004, 1014, 1118, and 1132 before winter and group them with the others?

That video looked like a rolling motherlode for the scenic railroads. May these things live on for many years to come on the dinner train circuit. That even applies to the geeps.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:1) What's going on in Billerica that they needed to clear out the space?

They were stored on one of the Greater Boston Transload (GBT) tracks. There was less capacity for PAR to transload. Also, it appears there's some construction getting ready to take place in the northeastern corner of Iron Horse Park. Hay-bales/orange-construction-netting-thingies that are the hallmark of impending construction near waterways/wetlands has sprung up in the area.

I have a feeling that several small local railroads might get one or two of these, restore them and run them. Are they fixable at all? I'm sure if someone spent money (something that the MBTA can't do but who can blame them) they could be resurrected

Send one to P&W to run their excursion trains. They would do great job restoring it and would look great in their colors. I don't think they have a HEP equipped loco...

Probably not the most financially prudent path for P&W to take...

I wouldn't mind seeing one of them on the Conway Scenic and/or Hobo. Not sure they want one, but they are a part of New England RR history.

Screamers are too big a fuel pig for very small excursion carriers because of the no-HEP/notch 8 operation. It also tends to be overkill on horsepower. Maine Eastern wasn't exactly getting peak efficiency out of theirs with how much fuel they burned on a relatively short run, so can't see Conway Scenic much less a volunteer-heavy operation like Hobo using them short of a very short-term rental situation a la Cape Cod Central right now. That said...there are some very big heritage operators out West that run longish-distance trains with large number of cars (Grand Canyon Railway, for example, uses ex-AMTK Screamers) where these would definitely be sought-after. Even with their advanced wear there's no shortage of aftermarket F40 parts, and cheap extra units are a good value for giving the carriers relievers so they can give their top-condition workhorses better TLC in the shop. I could see Iowa Pacific perhaps picking some up, since they own so many excursion carriers they share equipment amongst.


The FrankenGeeps...yuck. Unless somebody can easily de-gunk them by ripping out the problematic microprocessor control I'm not sure anybody would touch those. Those wonky controls are just too big a P.I.T.A. for a skunkworks carrier to want to touch unless they can be downrated. Or restored easily to freight gearing. NJ Transit's glut of dispersal Geeps are a much better value for that. And the shortline freights are starting to get much better aftermarket deals on Class I's & II's dispersal freight Geeps now that the big boys are slowly phasing them out. I could see those being carbody donors for MPI to do up more MP32's with cleanroomed guts and cabs in the old shell, like they did for SunRail with a bunch of MARC's retirees. Those no longer have anything Geep-related inside them beyond the shell, but if the MC's are that big a headache to try to modify it may be the best use for them going forward.

F-line to Dudley via Park wrote:Screamers are too big a fuel pig for very small excursion carriers because of the no-HEP/notch 8 operation. It also tends to be overkill on horsepower...

Small tourist carriers like the Conway Scenic and Hobo railroads don't use HEP. If you can pull a train with a freight locomotive (which most of the little guys do), you can pull one with an F40 not in scream mode. The notable exception is the G&U which uses modern Commuter Rail equipment for its Polar Express train. Naturally, the easiest thing to do in that case is plug the train into an engine which is designed to power it. Similarly, the Maine Eastern train was powered by locomotives which were designed for and ran in passenger service and it was made up of cars that relied on HEP for lights and HVAC. No doubt that was more expensive to run than Conway's notch train, even when they weren't running a locomotive which used the prime mover for HEP. Even if you sent a stretch down to the Cape, they still would use the HEP generator for power on their dinner train. The CapeFlyer, on the other hand, might be better off with a borrowed in service Commuter Rail engine over a retired screamer.

ANYWHO, the point is, the HEP thing is not an impediment on using screamers to pull tourist or museum trains.

Regardless of the running conditions, I'm sure Conway Scenic or a similar type railroad/museum will be happy to keep a screamer on display sort of like what they did with F7 4268

The Grand Canyon Ry has 2 F40's(ex-Amtrak) that still see service on the Williams-Grand Canyon run,
might be interested in a pair of MBTA F40's as parts donors.

Im assuming the F40s have dynamic braking? if so then i could see the CSRR preserving the 1000 as backup for the notch

CSRR573 wrote:Im assuming the F40s have dynamic braking? if so then i could see the CSRR preserving the 1000 as backup for the notch

There are no dynamics in the original fleet of F40s.

The ideal thing that would have also been cheaper to do is rebuild them again and put them back in service.

For those of us that miss the screamers, at least there is he G&U polar express. Although 1013 will not be cruising by at 59, she will be happily screaming as EMD intended her to do.

On another note, I had a dream awhile back where I won around 400 million dollars.I also must add this dream happened before 1016 met her fate. I purchased a rail line and then purchased ALL the screamers, along with six coaches. I then set up a excursion train where people that like screamers like I do can see hem run every day. Oh, and I still had around 300 million left, enough to finance the operation for a LONG time.

Oh well, back to reality.