Chinese Steam for PAR?

[KSmitty]

Pan Am has a history of kissing up to NS....

NS has a nice OCS.... Pan Am got a nice OCS
NS has F-units.... Pan Am got F-units
NS has heritage units (although not publicized until recently, I'm sure the higher ups at the railroads knew)... Pan Am got heritage units

So.... perhaps.....

NS has a steam program... Pan Am has to have a steam program too?

Pan Am's OCS has been around in various forms since the mid 80's they hardly 'got" a nice OCS because NS has one. Infact the Pan Am OCS is made of the same cars it was back in the mid 90's. Nothing new there...The F's yes, they got some of them, but then KCS has F's, UP has E's, BN had E's...F units's are what a train is supposed to look like to many people. They are, compared to GP40 widecabs, more dignified and look much more proper at the head of a business train. I'd put money on them being more a status symbol than a cookie to NS, although they did appear shortly after the NS units toured PAS...
Heritage units, who knows, PAR's more neatly coincide with Amtrak's Heritage Unit releases than NS's releases.

Long story short is, NS doesn't care how Pan Am Management gets pulled around the system, they don't care that the hump job at Deerfield is running with a special painted locomotive. What they care about is AYMO/MOAY get across the system in a timely manner, they care about clearance issues for doublestack, they care about the fact that despite huge amounts of money the west end is still in rough shape.

Don't hold your breath for Pan Am steam...as was said, "on a scale of 1 to crazy its somewhere between a 9 and crazy."

[jr145]

The heritage unit idea was the brain child of a manager who happens to be a railfan, as a way to boost morale amongst the crews.

[lvrr325]

Even at $500,000 it's cheaper to buy one of these than to rebuild any vintage American engine - costs can exceed twice that on even those put up in the best of shape.

[MEC407]

No doubt about it. And yes, it would be amazing if Pan Am actually did this. But I don't think anyone should get their hopes up based on a poorly Photoshopped image that was posted on Facebook of all places. Does this Mo Bouk person have any connection to the railroad or is this just a case of wishful thinking gone public?

[jr145]

I believe he is just an overzealous railfan.

[Otto Vondrak]

I would hope this answers some questions... I don't think we're going to see any Chinese steam anytime soon.

Yeah it was posted by "Mo Bouk," who is a rash all over Facebook polluting various pages with random nonsense. Nuff said.

[jr145]

Thats why I try not to read those facebook pages. Its all random nonsense or posts like "What engines should Pan Am buy, I think it should be this..." over and over and over again.

[Otto Vondrak]

Thats why I try not to read those facebook pages. Its all random nonsense or posts like "What engines should Pan Am buy, I think it should be this..." over and over and over again.

There are legitimate Facebook pages operated by organizations, and then you have jerks like Mo Bouk making fake pages and posting nonsense all over the internet.

[jr145]

The person that runs the PAR facebook page seems to try to post legit stuff and not pipe dreams. However some of the people that post on there seem to just post asinine stuff. Maybe it's gotten better, I haven't been on in a couple months.