ST214 wrote:The ideal thing that would have also been cheaper to do is rebuild them again and put them back in service.The economics of rebuilding a Screamer aren't what they were 10 years ago. The ones that are still kicking around rebuilt like Metro North's west-of-Hudson fleet were plucked from Amtrak dispersals back when the aftermarket for commuter rail power was nearly barren of anything built after the Eisenhower administration. So spending the bucks to physically modify the carbody steelwork to cram in the HEP generator and get it upgraded to -2Cxx spec was a great deal in the mid/late-90's. And once it had the HEP generator further rebuilds to -3C generation during the 'aughts and 2010's was pretty much rote-standard work.
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.
Today there's a glut of aftermarket power with generators--2nd-gen F40's, F59PH's, various assorted Geeps, P40DC's--that keeps getting replenished in bursts. It no longer makes dollars and sense for a commuter rail operator to scour for original Screamers when rebuilding comes with a modest cost premium of installing a HEP generator and working a blowtorch on the carbody to rig up the mounting space. It costs too much less to do a vanilla rebuild on something that had the generator from Day 1, or had the generator installed in a previous rebuild. Throw in the fact that even something as all-world solid as a Screamer is going to start to show early signs of metal fatigue after 35 years of punishment in all-day service, and timeframe between necessary rebuild cycles is going to be much shorter and hit up the operator doing the rebuild for $$$ more often than if they picked something a little newer to overhaul.
Add all those factors together and the economics of a rebuild for long-term continued service as somebody's mainstay commuter rail fleet just doesn't wash. The T hemmed and hawed on that very question with all the maybe-yes/maybe-no rumors that have come and gone about what the options were for these units. I'm sure they crunched the numbers themselves, and it just didn't look too hot in the end. Since there's no shortage of aftermarket parts it's entirely probable that most of these units will live on in limited service with the excursion carriers willing to give them some TLC, and maybe make some appearances on the leaser circuit if the rent-a-wreck brokers are sitting on enough of a parts cache to get them in "it runs; take it or leave it" shape for a couple years prior to the excursion carriers snapping them up. But that's it. I mean, we're maybe 3 years away from 20 Amtrak F59PHI's coming available for re-sale since Amtrak California has already drained their Siemens Charger replacement options...Caltrain's electrification dispensing with their 20+ F40PH-2C's in 5-7 years...and possibly a motherlode of 200+ P42DC's and P40DC's in 4-5 years if Amtrak takes the national options on the Charger. Then everyone else who plunks down for all-new Tier 4-compliant makes. It's just too much of an oversupply of 1980's and 1990's power about to flood the secondhand market for 1978's state-of-the-art to price out favorably for another overhaul.
That said...the -2C's and PHM-2C's are most definitely rebuildable if the T wanted to go that route. They probably won't for the (cross-fingers it isn't years late) 2020 procurement because they've simply outgrown 3000 HP locos, but those things are definitely going to be running for somebody for 2 more decades. Some of the latest -3C rebuilds are even kosher for the new emissions regs (in the tiers covering 'remanufacture').
