haha! i liked your reply... Razor Blades..
I worked for Conrail for a little while before moving out west and did something else.. But anyway.. for a 10 hour gig , sure, those dash 9's are comfortable..actually the newest I was in was a C40-8W but... From a railfan and fun perspective... 2 units on a train in "whisper" mode is no where near as fun as hearing and seeing 5 or 7 2nd generation units balls out on notch 8 shaking your body inside from wide open exaust... and those old dash 7's would shoot flame balls out of the exaust stack!! loved it.. it was fun!!!
So from both sides of the coin... yea, for crews working.. I see your partialness to new units.. Although, I did not mind the db level of a wide open GP38 on a grade... if it got too much I just wore hearing protection.
But track side.. The louder, smokier and more units... the better the experiance...
But east coast and mid west railroading is childs play!! when i lived out in California and railfanned all over the west.... Area's like Tehachapi, Mullen Pass, the rio grande lines over the Rockies!! that was the SH*T!!!! I have seen as many as 20 locomotives on trains full throttle going up 2.5 % grades!!! 6 up front, 7 mid train and 5 or so towards the rear.... Now that's balls out power!!! it will blow your mind!!!! All ya can do now is watch video's of it from pentrex because now adays with the Gevo's and dash 9's the most you'll see going over Tehachapi is 4 units up front and maybe 2 mid train, which by the way are lame remote control DPU!! Thats a whole other story how I am miffed over the fact that these railroads are so damn cheap now they fired 1000's of men so they can have remote control unmanned helpers!!! i cant wait till one of these fails and causes a severe incodent and it comes back that
well if a human was in the loop the train may not have derailed with 40 tank cars of clorine and napalm and leveled the whole town"... haha! a bit severe but the point is... I have a few friends who lost their careers with the railroad due to this aweful technology.... If I had my way as a railroad CEO i'd still run cabooses just for the fun of it...