Being a Canadian, most of the trains I end up seeing are either Canadian Pacific, or Canadian National... the latter being the main line that runs near my house. I've seen the occasional Norfolk Southern locomotives on the line, but a few days ago, I saw a Union Pacific locomotive (SD70, I think) in a consist with a Canadian National (SD60F). The road number on this Union Pacific was either 5006 or 5008... Can anybody shed any light on this odd lash-up?
Question for a Union Pacific Afficionado...
- Thread starter Agatheron
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This one has seen some industrial use then. It wasn't all that clean when I saw it. Granted, we've had some sloppy weather here, and so for it to be covered in dirt is not so surprising.
It was the second unit in the consist, with the CN loco in the lead... they were pulling autoracks... I couldn't tell if they were full or not... so I wasn't sure if they were coming from some a nearby auto plant, or if they were heading to one... there's a few around here...
It was the second unit in the consist, with the CN loco in the lead... they were pulling autoracks... I couldn't tell if they were full or not... so I wasn't sure if they were coming from some a nearby auto plant, or if they were heading to one... there's a few around here...
I don't know enough about the inter-company relationships and how much of CN is owned by Union Pacific or vice versa... I had never seen a UP locomotive up this way before. I've seen Norfolk Southern, Southern Pacific, GT(duh) running on the CN lines, but never UP and never in a lash-up with another CN locomotive...
According to my trackside guide, UP locos do come into Canada on "run through" service... it didn't indicate being paired with CN locos...
According to my trackside guide, UP locos do come into Canada on "run through" service... it didn't indicate being paired with CN locos...
It was probably "pool power." Most of the large railroads participate in a power pool. When they are busy and power short they borrow excess power from other railroads in the pool. The catch is that when you borrow power from the pool then you owe power to the pool at a later date. U.P. was probably paying back "owed" power. I've seen a bunch of N&S "prancing horses" on the U.P. here as well as some CSX here in So Cal. lately.
We were camped by a rail line (GTW) south of Detroit this fall and I saw some odd lashups. One was GTW paired with some other road (forget which) and the next was BNSF and UP.
