Best and Brightest
This caption is a long one, but some good stuff I think! The Bozeman Local's once a week trip to Livingston has been cut down after RY Timber suffered a large fire. Without the summer MOW tie cars or RY centerbeams, there can be weeks where one or two cars makes up the train. On this gorgeous winter day however, they had ahold of 60+ cars heading to storage, which really fills out the photo.
If I asked which locomotive in this picture was the most state of the art, would you say the SD70ACe? Probably, but you'd be wrong. Both the MRL 404 and 405 are recent recipients of a ground up electrical rebuild. This was a significant investment in these locomotives, which bodes well for them in the future. Alas, with progress comes more erosion of the past. Sharp eyes will notice the #404 has lost its class lights, a casualty of functionally useless jewelry. While it is fairly tongue in cheek to suggest these units are more advanced than the SD70ACe, with an orange wave coming it certainly gives these old DRGW units a leg up on the competition when the chopping block arrives!
Best and Brightest
This caption is a long one, but some good stuff I think! The Bozeman Local's once a week trip to Livingston has been cut down after RY Timber suffered a large fire. Without the summer MOW tie cars or RY centerbeams, there can be weeks where one or two cars makes up the train. On this gorgeous winter day however, they had ahold of 60+ cars heading to storage, which really fills out the photo.
If I asked which locomotive in this picture was the most state of the art, would you say the SD70ACe? Probably, but you'd be wrong. Both the MRL 404 and 405 are recent recipients of a ground up electrical rebuild. This was a significant investment in these locomotives, which bodes well for them in the future. Alas, with progress comes more erosion of the past. Sharp eyes will notice the #404 has lost its class lights, a casualty of functionally useless jewelry. While it is fairly tongue in cheek to suggest these units are more advanced than the SD70ACe, with an orange wave coming it certainly gives these old DRGW units a leg up on the competition when the chopping block arrives!