The Last MEC Painted Locomotive Is Leaving

emd_16645 wrote:http://www.trainweb.org/emdloco/

Shows the units going to Helm. I'd have to do some digging to find where I got the information from about the units being repossessed.

I also show B&M GP40s 320, 321, 323, 324, 341 leaving the same way.

The 256, 258 and 263 are still rostered with HELM as HLCX units.

Thanks. That info is helpful, although all it really tells us is that Helm now owns the units. Guilford could have sold the units to Helm. If you can find any more information about the units actually being repossessed, it would be great if you could post it here.

CN9634 wrote:http://photos.nerail.org/showpic/?20071 ... 126546.jpg

The color in the rain on this unit is amazing! Wouldn't it be nice if Guilford did heritage units... just dreaming again as always

Heritage units would be amazing... no doubt about that! Oddly enough, the color on that unit held up remarkably well over the years. When you look at the pics from Billerica, you can see that the shine is long gone, but the yellow color itself really hasn't faded very much.

Conversely, there are Pan Am boxcars that were painted less than three years ago, and they already have very noticeable fading.

Take a look at this unit, and try to imagine it as being shorter and having four axles instead of six:

http://rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=838327

That's what the 254 will probably look like when MPI gets done with it and delivers it to PHL.

Hey what about this picture? http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 866&nseq=4
The locomotive that is on the left edge of the photo, closest to the camera? Looks like MEC paint?

[The locomotive that is on the left edge of the photo, closest to the camera? Looks like MEC paint?[/quote]

Its a former Genesee & Wyoming group unit....

Has anyone noticed in the other forums if they are tracking 254 all the way to Idaho?

One possibility on why it sat - sometimes when units are returned at the end of a lease, they're required to be operable. This unit could have been parts donor to make other engines operable again - while depriving Guilford of an engine, it also saved them the costs of paying for new parts, or penalty costs from the lessor of whatever engine it donated parts to.

The only flaw in that is it's not a dash-2 or AC model, so the generator and some other parts would be wrong for the dash-2 units most of which were not kept. But the engine parts would be the same, or similar.

I'd be pretty amazed if the MEC units would still have been on a lease arrangement 25+ years after construction. Usually leases are only for 10-15 years, in some cases 20. IIRC the MEC units were built ca. 1966, so this makes no sense.

I';d also frankly be astounded that MEC being MEC, they didn't buy these units outright, or through an independent loan. The old-school MEC and BAR weren't exactly known for habitually spending money they didn't have, and I've never heard of any of their older power being bought on a long-term lease-purchase arrangement. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I've never heard of this and it doesn't strike me as the typically frugal yankee MEC/BAR way of doing things.

BTW_ if you really love MEC U-boats, pick up the latest issue of Railroad Explorer.

http://railroadexplorer.com/

-otto-

Speaking of the U-Boats, the 404 and 407 remain in MEC harvest gold sitting at CAD in Montreal. Unless CAD has decided to use them for frames for the hybrid/gensets built there.

MEC 254 has arrived at MPI/Boise and already unloaded.

Dave