BNSF Railway train Q-NWHLAC6-30 leans into a curve as it heads west toward Cajon Pass. BNSF ES44AC 5750 and British Columbia Railway Dash 9-44CW 4653 are leading this 11,142-foot long intermodal train, making its trip from Ohio’s North Baltimore to Los Angeles, with BNSF ES44C4 6632 and BNSF ES44AC 6075 (one of the BNSF’s 25th Anniversary engines) on the rear, operating in Distributed Power (DPU) mode. This poor train was already over a full day late – 37 hours 13 minutes late! – much of it due to a lengthy work window between Needles and Goffs in California’s Mojave Desert – and was limping along at this point as it was having trouble with its Positive Train Control (PTC) and Trip Optimizer programming. This train had to stop at East Victorville, Hesperia and, just ahead, Lugo, (along with, most likely, other spots of which I was not aware) due to these issues. The train sat in Lugo for an hour or so as the crew attempted to get the software to work properly. They finally did what one does with a glitchy computer – they rebooted it. However, to perform this operation the train was tied down and the handbrakes were set on a certain number of cars in order to prevent the train from moving while the "reboot" was being performed. They then had to release the handbrakes on these cars once the software appeared to be running as designed, and the train was able to operate flawlessly the rest of the way to Los Angeles. As the old adage states: Late trains keep getting later. The BCOL unit is now part of Canadian National’s roster, although it has not yet had its reporting mark changed. CN considers this engine to be a Dash 9-44CWL. (Hesperia, California – February 5, 2021)
Not
just heritage schemes, not just commemorative schemes - this album is devoted to some of the world's most interesting paint schemes, past or present.
